


Apocalypses and Other Life Stages

by blessedharlot



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Art, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Background Staron, Brother-Sister Relationships, Dimension Travel, Dimensional Dopplegangers, Disability, Disable Protagonist, Disabled Character, Disabled Female Protagonist, Evil Bucky Barnes, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Protagonist, Food, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Intrigue, Language!, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Moustache Twirling, Muppet References, On the Run, Quinjet Quintet, Saving the World, Superfluous Muppet Henchmen, Swearing, Threat of Fascism, Time Travel, Vehicles with Surprise Flight Capabilities, ace friendly, also she's low key dyslexic, background buckynat, no really if the villains had moustaches they'd twirl them, use of idiot slur by natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: Ellie Rogers is a refugee in this universe.Having just lost her family and her home reality, Ellie’s oldest friend and closest ally is now someone she’s known for about a week – Ian Rogers, the brother she never had.And just as she learns the joys of Netflix, and take-out Indian food, it becomes clear that something’s very wrong in her new world too.Amidst all the dopplegangers of this parallel dimension, how will she figure out who’s real family, and who’s dangerous? And who’s both? And what’s happened to the timeline that now threatens them all?Ellie is disoriented and in danger… but she’s also a Rogers: fierce, brave, tender-hearted, and fated to save whatever dimension she finds herself in.This story picks up immediately after the miniseries “Hail Hydra”, starring Ian Rogers and written by Rick Remender, though you don’t have to have read that series to enjoy this tale. Pre-Secret Empire, and no HydraCap involved.





	1. The Hospital

**Author's Note:**

> Though other canon comics universes are mentioned, the entire activity of this story takes place in the 616 universe.

Fully expecting herself to be dead, Ellie was quite surprised to find her groggy senses assaulted with new input.

Pain. Exhaustion. Disorientation.

She kept her eyes closed. Too much to take in from the inside so far. Don’t need more. _Don’t know who’s looking_ , she thought. _Play dead_.

It really made no sense. She should be dead. Shouldn’t she? Hydra had found the Resistance headquarters, she clearly remembered that. And the symbiotes had attacked. And Ellie had watched while her mother and father were killed. And then she was killed. She somehow watched her own face dying, but how could that be -

No. Ellie realized she had it wrong. That memory was of her mother’s face, as she lay dying. That wasn’t where it ended for Ellie. She didn’t die there in that cave with them. The stranger wouldn’t let her. He led them both to relative safety.

She was still alive. She didn’t die in the cave. That’s not where the pain came from that she felt. The damage from a blow to her abdomen still rang through her bones with each breath. Her abdomen still existed. She thought she felt other damage to her shoulder, and her head. Her foot was as good as her foot ever was, which was to say, excruciatingly there.

_The stranger had helped_ , she remembered. When she was in shock and overwhelmed before, he helped. _What his name? Ian? Ian._ Claimed to be her parents’ son. So strange. He was from another dimension and…

Another dimension. That was it. Ian had been trapped in her dimension, and was trying to get them both out, away from her home. Back to his home. Away from the Confederation of Hydra that held her world in its grip. Away from the horrific dictator Arnim Zola. Away from…

That was it.

In what felt like hours, but was probably only a matter of seconds, Ellie pieced together what must have happened. She watched her friends and family die in that cave - everyone in her home dimension that she ever loved. But she was a Rogers and she kept fighting the good fight, her parents’ cause. She walked into Hydra headquarters with the stranger, Ian - her brother who wasn’t really her brother - and together they assaulted all the evil masterminds that held the country in their grip… up to and including Zola.

But she wasn’t either one of her parents, and neither was Ian. Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter might have brought Hydra down, someday, but Ellie and Ian didn’t.

Their victory was in getting away. Escaping, while she controlled the symbiote they gave her.

Getting away, through a portal into another reality.

Ian must have gotten her out, as her mortal wound dragged her halfway into death.

Ian got her to… wherever she was.

_Oh God, please be another dimension. Please_. If they hadn’t left her home reality, there would be nothing but torture and captivity waiting for her. She didn’t have the fight left for that.

_Dammit_ , she thought. She really was going to have to open her eyes to get any answers.

_What’s the point,_ she asked herself. _What’s the point of anything anymore?_

_Eleanor Rogers, don’t you think such a thing_. Ellie heard her mother’s voice in her own head.

_Ellie-bear,_ she could hear her father say, _there’s always something more to care about. Open your eyes and see what you’ve got to work with now._

Ellie finally lifted her dragging eyelids and looked around.

She was in a nondescript and entirely ordinary hospital room. Lots of beige and pale blue. No framed pictures of Zola or the Iron Baron were assaulting her. No Octopus icons appeared on the walls. This was possibly not a Hydra hospital.

_Well at least there’s that_ , she thought.

She looked down to see what she was wearing, and it was a thin, pale blue gown with some tiny flowers on it. Not exactly Hydra’s style.

Slowly, her eyes focused, and her brain processed the strange surroundings. To her left there was a short sofa, and a window with heavy curtains drawn. Across from her there was a board on the wall, with a combination of formally printed and handwritten content in various marked off blocks. She willed her brain and eyes to focus and read the board.

It had the date. “Good morning, Ellie!” “Fall Risk: Yes” “Attending: Okereke” “Nurse: Yesenia” “What is Happening Today: MRI.” A row of round cartoon faces was called the Pain Scale, and was untouched.

At the bottom of the board was printed “Emergency Contact” and next to it was written: “Ian Rogers.”

Ellie struggled to understand, to put the pieces together... the way her parents taught her. _Ian got us out. They’re taking care of me. We’re somewhere friendly. Possibly._

She looked down at herself again. Her wounds were dressed properly.

There were no guards in the room with her. She was alone.

_We’re not captured. The Hydra I know doesn’t have me. I don’t think. Unless this is some elaborate ruse. Which they wouldn’t have much need for._

She looked to her right just as someone entered the room through a door, next to a glass wall. Her first impulse was to get up, get into fighting position, find something to protect herself with, wonder if the window was a suitable escape route, guess how far the fall might be if she took it.

But she hadn’t gotten far before the blurry person coalesced back into the stranger, Ian.

Emergency Contact Ian.

“Hey there soldier, at ease,” Ian offered as he stepped closer. Ellie realized she’d managed to prop herself up on an elbow and get one fist in front of her without realizing it.

“You’re okay,” he continued. “You’re safe. We’re safe.”

She blinked at him.

He gestured awkwardly to the chair between them that she hadn’t noticed yet. “Okay if I sit?” he asked.

Ellie searched for words.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Is it a free country?”

Ian snorted, then shrugged, as he pulled the chair to a gentle conversational distance and sat down. “Well, that’s a complicated question. Depends on who you are. But compared to what you’re used to? Mostly yes.”

“So, are we... back in your dimension?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“You’re back home,” she processed.

Ian nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.” He looked worried about her, and unwilling to say more.

_Ian’s back home._ She found that strangely comforting. He seemed not terrible. He seemed a bit like her dad. If his parents - his version of Sharon Carter and Steve Rogers - were alive somewhere and he could get back to them… well, she found that a bit satisfying.

_Oh, wait…_

They weren’t alive _somewhere_. They were alive _here_ , on this planet or reality or whatever this was. The same whatever-this-was that she was in now.

“Are they…” She stopped. “I mean…”

She looked behind him and realized that anybody walking by could see them talking. The medical staff could watch, as they might need to. But anybody else could be there close to her, too. No one appeared to be doing anything but rushing around in that way medical personnel seem to have about them in any dimension. She didn’t see any guards, either.

But Ian’s Steve and Sharon could have been there. They might have already seen her.

She felt hot all of the sudden. The dizziness she’d tried to shake off as she woke up threatened to overwhelm her again. She became very aware of the rushing sound of her own breathing.

“Heeey now,” Ian whispered. “Let’s just… just the two of us, let’s hang out. Here. Until you get your bearings, okay?” He offered. He even put a hand on her forearm. She stared at it, but didn’t pull away from it.

Ellie nodded, and tried to calm her breathing.

“What’s important is, there’s no danger here for you,” Ian offered. “You can heal up. That, uh, that fight we attempted was perhaps a bit ill-advised.”

“You mean when we tried to take on nearly a dozen, heavily armed, major Hydra officials? By ourselves without weapons?”

“That’s… that’s the one,” Ian said.

“The symbiote. I had a symbiote.”

“The docs seem to think it left. You were all but dead, really,” Ian said. “It probably thought it had better prospects.”

“You got me out,” Ellie said.

Ian shrugged again. “To be fair, I thought I might just be taking you to a decent burial, in an undisclosed location, in yet another random dimension. Possibly followed immediately by my own, less respectful final rest.”

Ellie grinned. “You’re a real optimist, Rogers.”

“Well. I might take after my dad in that regard,” Ian smiled. Then he grimaced. “Sorry, I-”

“Don’t,” Ellie said firmly. “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad one of us still has them,” she said. “You do, still, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, questions still in his eyes.

“Well, I’ve met a Steve and a Sharon in my life. I’m going to bet they want to meet me. And I have to believe they won’t be the only ones.”

“It’s nothing, you know,” Ian trailed off in what she imagined to be an uncharacteristic fashion. She suspected he generally had much more surety about himself. “There’s no official inquiry, or anything like that. You won’t have any random investigators hounding you, or anything of that nature. I mean…”

Ellie stared at the ceiling and listened.

“Mom and Dad just want to make sure you’re okay, offer any help they can,” Ian said. “The others, you can tell them to buzz off, if you want. I don’t know how well you knew a Tony Stark in your... world…”

“I knew Tony,” Ellie whispered. She wasn’t prepared to talk about this any further.

“Well there’s one here that’s just very curious. About any scientific inquiry he can get his hands on. I know… I mean this is…”

He paused, looking at her thoughtfully.

“Ellie,” he said simply, “you don’t owe anybody here anything.”

Ian stopped to emphasize his point. Ellie could feel him staring as she continued to gaze at the ceiling.

Ian continued. “I know Tony would appreciate any information you were willing to provide him. But you don’t have to.”

Ellie nodded. She supposed it would be difficult to talk about. But, it was also something to do with her time. She had nothing else to do.

“Anyway,” Ian continued. “Um. Just so you know. I’m not a stranger to setting up a new life in a foreign land.”

That was enough for Ellie to stop staring at the ceiling and shift to his face. He had talked about his home dimension being different even than this one. She thought she had that right. That meant that he must have made this same move. The one she would have to figure out how to make… right about now.

“You need a roof over your head,” Ian said. “And I’ve got one. So. You’re welcome to stay with me until you get some things sorted.”

Ellie took a good look at Ian. She knew Steve had adopted him; she could see the stubbornness of his jaw took a different angle than her father’s did. But Ian had her dad’s kind eyes, and his straw colored hair. And her mother’s laughlines, when he smiled.

There was a knock at the door, and a dark-skinned, lanky woman in a lab coat entered.

“Miss Rogers,” she began, with a lilt, “My name is Dr. Okereke. I’m very pleased to see you awake.”

Ian leaned back to make room for the doctor to shake Ellie’s hand.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked her.

“Well, I’ve been better,” Ellie said. “But I’ve been worse too, I guess.”

The doctor frowned thoughtfully and nodded.

“Thank you for patching me up,” Ellie said.

“That was mostly our trauma doctors, though I’ve been keeping a close eye on your colon as you heal. Things are going better than we expected-”

“You…” Ellie interrupted, and then looked to Ian, unsure how to phrase her question. “If you don’t mind me asking, who do you work for?”

“That’s a fair question,” Dr Okereke replied. “I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

With every passing syllable in that name, Ellie felt her eyebrows involuntarily lift higher.

“For short, we are called SHIELD,” Dr. Okereke offered. “Our goal as a group is to protect those who need protection.”

“This world’s Steve has worked with them for some time,” Ian interjected as further explanation.

Ellie nodded. Presumably these are the good guys. This world’s Resistance. With better equipment, it would seem.

“Okay just to make clear, I’ve got nothing to give in return for any of this,” Ellie stated.

“Nor would we wish anything from you,” Dr. Okereke assured her. “We are here to contribute to your wellbeing, not to profit.”

Ellie wasn’t the most street-wise person she knew.  But she fancied herself pretty good at picking out real sincerity and fake sincerity. She thought the woman in front of her seemed quite genuine in her concern. Ellie might as well trust these doctors for now, she supposed.

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

“You’re quite welcome," Dr. Okereke replied. “Now, as I said, you had sustained some abdominal injuries when you came to us. Those are healing more quickly than expected.”

“I honestly don’t understand how they healed at all,” Ellie said, feeling slightly bewildered. If anything felt like a mortal wound tearing her in half, she’d thought that was exactly what had happened to her insides. “I didn’t expect to wake up.”

“You might not have,” Dr Okereke said, “had your friend not acted so quickly.”

Ellie looked at Ian. He shrugged.

“I have a... substance,” he said.

“A what?” Ellie said with alarm.

“It’s a… it’s a long story. But I have a regenerative… substance. That I keep in my gear.”

“Okay. Gross, but thank you,” Ellie said.

Ian grimaced and sighed. Then he rolled his eyes. “My biological father is an evil genetic engineer. He created a substance that I brought from my home dimension that I store in my suit. As long as I have it close, I can heal from almost anything. I was…”

A wave of realization hit Ellie.

“Ohhh, that beatdown that Captain Hydra gave you back home?” Ellie had dragged his broken, nearly dead body through the sewers of her own world, not expecting him to recover so easily from a broken back.

“Exactly,” he said. “You were in terrible shape, when we got away.”

He ran his hands through his hair, while Ellie tried to figure him out.

“I was desperate to do something, anything, so I smeared your wounds with my regeneration gel. It’s not… I mean it’s not universal, it’s genetically matched to me. It wasn’t ideal. But I guess it helped you hang on.”

Ellie looked to the doctor, and she nodded.

Ian continued. “That and the old Rogers grit was enough, I guess, to get you here. Doom you to a life away from everything you knew.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, examining him.

“Your shoulder sustained minor damage, mostly to soft tissue around the glenohumeral joint,” Dr. Okereke continued. “It should heal fully at your age. Your foot… I would like to discuss with you.”

“Oh,” Ellie said with a sigh. “That.”

“Please tell me about it,” the doctor requested.

Ellie sighed. “I’m really very tired,” she said, “and there’s nothing to be done about my foot. Maybe we could discuss it some other time. The symbiote, I… do you all have symbiotes here?”

“We do,” the doctor replied. “With the effects of the dimensional difference on your physiology, we have no way of being 100% certain the symbiote is gone. You have anomalies in your readings that we don’t fully understand. But we have reason to believe you’re free and clear of it.”

“What reasons, exactly?” Ellie asked. “I’d like to know just how likely it is I’ll turn into an evil slime monster.”

“The reasons include a thorough analysis of your friend’s verbal account of your status during your travels, and an assessment and predictive model of what your baseline readings would likely be.”

Ellie looked took a moment to absorb her words.

“So you’re guessing,” Ellie said.

“In an educated manner,” Dr. Okereke smiled.

“Okay well, I guess that’s as good as I get. Thank you, doctor, very much, for all your help.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll leave you to rest before other visitors arrive, but I’d like to send someone to discuss your foot with you before discharge.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

“Thanks, doc.” Ian stood up and shook her hand as she left. He waited until she’d left and turned to Ellie.

“Maybe, probably, possibly not a symbiote,” Ellie said.

Ian wiggled his eyebrows. “That’s pretty good odds on the Rogers scale.”

Ellie snorted. “Do you know her?”

Ian shook his head. “No, but I trust the people here. You’re getting good care.”

Ellie’s gaze drifted past the information board as she worked to absorb the doctor’s words. She thought she felt Ian’s eyes still on her.

“You’re probably not going to be the kind of target here that you’re used to being,” Ian offered. “I’m not saying trust everybody you meet. But you’re not the scion of the Resistance here. You’re not the prime real estate you used to be.”

Ellie scoffed. “Well, aren’t you a charmer.”

Ian chuckled and got up to leave. “I’m going to give you some more space. You can barely keep your eyes closed.”

“They’re not waiting in the lobby for me?” She raised her voice a bit to reach him as he headed out the door.

“They’re the patient type,” he called back. Then the door closed.

_Good,_ she thought. _I’m not ready for that._

  
  


The board read “Good evening, Ellie” when she got back from the testing they did on her. Everyone around her was startled at the speed of her recovery. Ellie knew she was a fast healer, historically - thanks in large part to her dad’s serum - but she didn’t have any experience with any injuries this extensive to compare to this time.

But she could now tolerate tilting the top half of her bed up to a sitting up position, and now enjoyed doing so. She felt better, physically. She felt less like she would easily crumble at a heavy breeze.

Someone had drawn her curtains for her, and the sun was now setting. Pinks and purples streaked across a blue gradient sky. The beauty sat warmly in her chest.

“Miss Rogers,” a voice said.

Ellie turned, and another person in a lab coat entered her room. This person was of an indeterminate gender, and was short and round with a warm, dark face.

“My name is Dr. Johnson, and I’m an orthopedist.” They gently shook her hand. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine, thank you, how are you?” she said absentmindedly.

“I am well, thank you for asking,” the doctor replied. “Well, we’re all very excited at your recovery. Dr. Okereke is managing your other major wound. Please, if you feel up to it, tell me a bit about your foot.”

Ellie took a moment - as she always did - and pondered the question, the questioner, and the whole situation before talking about her foot.

“It’s an old injury,” she said.

“I can see that,” they said gently. “Was it crushed, perhaps?”

Ellie nodded.

“And the corrective pins?”

“A friend was trying to help,” Ellie said. “Did help. I don’t think I’d be able to walk without them.”

“So you can walk on it?”

“Yes.”

“How well do you walk on it?”

_Who’s asking_ , Ellie bit back. “I walk fine.”

“I ask because the execution of the assistive pins is quite crudely done and-”

“I walk fine, thank you. I can even run. And considering what my family had to work with, it’s a gift I was given to get the pins at all.”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Johnson continued. “Please just know that in this world, I am certain we could give you a more ergonomic - and I’m certain, a far more comfortable - walking experience.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said, eager for them to go.

She put her hands on her lap and stared at her bedsheets as the doctor continued. She felt petulant and silly, and she didn’t know why she didn’t just ask the doctor to leave. Or thank them better for trying to help. Or even take them up on their offer help to fix her terrible foot.

Instead, she kept staring at her bedsheets. The doctor said some pleasantries that Ellie didn’t listen to, and then they left.

Ellie was still lost in thought staring at her lap, when she noticed that there had been a knock on the door several moments ago, and that there was now a second one. Then she realized that whoever it was wouldn’t come into her room without permission from her.

A warm chill went through her. She had a feeling before she looked up that she knew who it would be.

She finally managed to lift her head.

He was gray. He was exactly the same except that he was gray and old. But otherwise he looked the same. He looked like her dad.

But her own dad would never get that old now.

She shook herself out of her reverie, and waved him in. He remained at the door until he clearly saw her wave  - And then his familiar warm efficiency, moving like an old soldier, opening the door and entering with no extraneous movement… it made her heart melt.

“Eleanor?” he asked tentatively.

She nodded numbly. This was terrifying. She didn’t know why this - talking to an old man she’d never met, as they both sat there in an ordinary room - she didn’t know why that would be so terrifying.

He came close, and motioned to the chair. “May I sit down?” he asked.

She nodded, proud of herself that she was dry-eyed.

“Well,” he exhaled as he sat down. “You’ve probably guessed this part by now,” he said. “But my name is Steve Rogers.”

She nodded. She took in his hairline, and his nose… and then the shape of his fingers. At once intimately familiar and very strange.

“Ian speaks highly of you,” Steve said. “He said you were smart, and kind, and resourceful. He said you impressed him. He doesn’t say that easily.”

He had the same eyes. Nearly the same. A different person in the same eyes.

One of Zola’s parting gifts before Ellie left her own home world was staring back at her through her father’s eyes, using his lifeless body to try and win the battle for Hydra. It wasn’t something she’d easily forget. Ellie felt a storm of emotions quietly wrack her as yet a third man was reflected back to her in those same eyes.

“He was very kind, to help me,” Ellie said. “Ian. He tried to help my whole world, to save it from evil. He risked himself. He said it was what you’d want.”

“He’s a good man, with a good heart. Never hurts to have friends like that, eh?”

Ellie nodded, and stared at her hands again.

“Ellie, I can only imagine what this must be like for you now. You probably feel you’ve got lots of decisions to make. I know you’ve got lots of information to absorb. Please, please take your time with all of that. There’s no rush. It’s not a race.”

His eyes were a different sort of kind.

“I know,” Steve continued, “I know you’ve lost a lot too. I won’t say I know what you’re going through, but I’ve been through something a bit like that.”

Ellie’s heart threatened to swell into her throat and close it. But she held it back, out of pride. She wouldn’t cry in front of this man. She didn’t know him, not really.

“I just want you to know,” he said, “that you’re not alone. That you have friends, not just in Ian, but in myself, and in my wife, Sharon. She couldn’t make it here, but she wanted me to give you her warmest wishes. I’m aware that might be quite strange for you. And I’m sorry we can’t do much to ease that. But whatever we can do to help - and that’s up to you to decide - we’re here.”

“Thank you. I... thank you,” she blurted out.

Ellie searched for more to say. She didn’t know how to speak to this man, or talk about what had happened. She had nothing to say about Ian, or about this world that she didn’t know. She didn’t even know what it meant… a different, parallel dimension. How different? What’s different? What’s parallel?

Mom and Dad always said that when she got disoriented or afraid, she should look for what grounds her.

But what could possibly ever ground her again, when they were both gone forever, and her dad’s double sat here a stranger to her?

She looked up, wondering if meeting his gaze might give her some words. _Stand where you are, Ellie-bear. That’s the first step,_ dad always said. So in her mind’s eye, she stood up, and sloughed off her confusion, for now, and looked at the person sitting in front of her. She stepped outside all the questions in her head, and looked at him.

And she still found she had nothing to say.

Steve seemed to sense that she didn’t have any further response.

“Well, now that I’ve laid a heavy emotional trip on you, I’ve got some good news. They’re talking about springing you out of here.”

“Oh?” Ellie instantly wondered why she wasn’t more relieved. She hated hospitals. She’d no longer have to second guess the motivations of every person that entered, every medical choice they made. Maybe getting outside would feel better.

“Ian said he offered you some room at his place.” Steve said. “Will you be taking him up on that?”

Ellie half-nodded. “Well, after fielding lots of offers from all of my adoring fans, I decided Ian’s package of not living on the streets on a strange planet was probably the best.”

Steve nodded sagely. “Well, your view of the stars won’t be near as good that way. But it may still have its advantages.”

Ellie smiled, and Steve winked.

“Let me get out of your hair. Ian’s preparing the space as we speak. Oh, I almost forgot. Here you go,” Steve said, and he handed her a small, pocketable electronic device that was mostly viewscreen on one side.

Must be a phone, she thought. They looked so much sleeker here.

“That’s a phone. It’s got my number programmed in, if you ever need anything. Sharon’s too. She’s going to visit soon as she can.”

“Thank you, uh…” She began to say his name, then stopped cold, realizing she wasn’t at all sure what name she should use. It sounded so strange, to call him by his first name, but there was really nothing else reasonable to use.

But that was his name. _His_ name. And _he_ wasn’t here.

“Thank you.” She felt a fool, but that was all she could manage.

Steve winked again, nodded, and then he left.

She was alone.


	2. The Brother

Her dimensional jump hadn’t left much room for luggage, so Ellie moving into Ian’s apartment consisted of little more than heading home from the hospital in the clothes he had procured for her.

Ian had been given a lump sum of money to give to her, to help with her adjustment period. On the subway ride home they spoke about jobs, and clothes shopping, and food… and Ellie got her first taste of public crowds in this world. They were angrier, happier, more vibrant, more alive than back home. Ian lead them to a place called The Bay Leaf -- eventually, once he’d worked through some disorientation about where it was. From there, they bought bags of food to bring home. The smells were amazing, and Ellie was starving by now.

Soon they were climbing the steps of his brownstone apartment building. 

Ellie’s family had been on the run for years, so thinking about any place as more than shelter for the night was strange and novel. But Ian had lived here for months; it sounded safe. She might even have somebody here watching her back. That fit the best definition she had for a location to call home.

“So he was in ice? Like completely frozen?” Ellie asked, as they entered Ian’s apartment. She sat the food down on a bar separating the tiny kitchen from a long living room, while Ian rummaged for silverware.

“Yeah, for decades,” Ian replied, as he pulled drinking glasses. “Water okay? I’m out of soda.”

“Sure.”

Ian kept a clean, but cluttered, living space, with half-unpacked boxes and pieces of furniture in odd places. It felt as if he’d never truly entirely moved in. Decorations were sparse, but there were several beautiful large photographs of spacescapes hanging. It felt downright luxurious to Ellie.

The lights in the kitchen stirred fond feelings, but she wasn’t sure why.

“Anybody else would have died,” Ian said, “but the serum was active then, and kept him alive that whole time.” He handed her a glass of ice water.

Ellie nodded. “Wow. Yeah, mine had a serum too. I ended up with some after-effects. They think it’s why I can get around as well as I can.”

Ian handed her a dish of green food and she immediately dug into it. A creamy spinach flavor mixed with a salty cheese and a thick mix of spices. She thought she could eat this - whatever it was - for the rest of her life.

Ellie hopped up on a stool nearby and continued eating.

Ian looked at her hesitantly, then asked anyway. “Mind if I ask what happened to your foot?”

Ellie took a long gulp of water and shrugged. “Like, you said. I was a target.” She scooped another spoonful of the spinach into her mouth. “Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter -- The First Couple of the Resistance,” Ellie announced in her newscaster voice. “Those two have a baby, and people get ambitious.”

Ian paused his eating to take a drink himself. He kept quiet though, still watching her, and let her continue at her own pace.

_ He might be not terrible _ , she thought.  _ That might come in handy. _

“There was a guy,” she continued. “You met him. Strucker. He wasn’t yet the Iron Baron, but he’d get there,” she said. “Off of me,” she tacked on bitterly.

Ellie had managed a cavalier tone up to now, she was certain of it. But then the old rage welled up. She took another bite, and another drink.

“He wanted to get in closer with Zola,” she said. “So once I was born, in a hidden bunker just out of town, he kept the hospitals scoped out for years. Eventually, even with a generational serum boost from old dad’s genes, I still finally got ill. From some poison gas used at a rally.”

“So he tracked you down, sent people to kill you?”

“Oh no. Killing me wouldn’t have slowed my parents down. He was smarter than that.”

Ian stopped cold and stared. “He intentionally hobbled you.”

“Yup,” she said. “From then on out, at least some part of the Resistance had to wait for me. Or carry me. Or put up with my bitching, at the least.”

“How much pain were you in walking here?” Ian asked incredulously.

Ellie glared at the question.

“The hospital offered you a cane or a chair to take with you,” he said a fussy voice. “There’s an elevator here, we could make room to maneuver.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes. She wasn’t ready to be seen with a cane. She had no idea how safe she was here. Surely Ian of all people would understand that.

But he kept staring, waiting for an answer.

“The cane was ugly,” she finally said.

Ian shook his head and looked at his emptied container of food. He got up, threw the old container away, and pulled more cartons out of the restaurant bags, handing one to her first. She hadn’t decided yet how he felt about his chivalrous moments. 

The lights in the kitchen…. she realized what the familiarity was. They were the same pale, slightly flickering blue as the lights in the Tunnels back home. The maze left over from a long-abandoned underground transport system had served as a conveniently complicated hiding place for the Resistance for years, before she was born. But in Ellie’s lifetime they mostly functioned as places she could escape the confines of whatever base they had made, and whatever claustrophobic social situation was demanding her attention. They were a place for her to be by herself, a rare luxury. That particular color of light had enjoyable associations; it warmed her heart.

She scooped up the last of her spinach and opened the second container Ian had offered, to find what looked like chicken pieces in a creamy red sauce.

“You have Indian food where you’re from?” he asked.

“Well, I suspect Indian folks did,” she replied. “We existed mostly on military rations, felt like.”

“The first one you inhaled was called saag paneer,” he said. “That one’s korma. That place delivers too.” He reached back to tap a piece of paper hung up on what she suspected was the fridge. “Oh! Don’t miss the naan.”

He peered back into the restaurant bags and retrieved a foil package as Ellie comprehended what he’d said.

“Wait. Are you saying… I can stay right here, and get this brought to me?”

Ian stuck half the contents of the foil bag - which was bread, as it turned out -  into her korma as he replied.

“You can stay in your pajamas, all day, and have food delivered here. All day.”

Ellie stared at him for what felt like ages.

“Okay,” she said. “I could live here.”

Ian nodded in emphatic agreement.

“Why would you tell me this?” she asked. “Do you want me here forever? Don’t I need a job or something? Don’t you eventually need rent? Why would you offer up such a powerful piece of intel to me so soon?”

Ian chuckled at her. “Because I’ve met you,” he said. “And we’re way too much alike.”

Ellie squinted at him.

“I dare you to try it,” Ian said. “Go ahead. Sit your ass down, turn on the tv. I’ll bring you all the menus. You be bored half to death before the day is up.”

“I’m pretty sure that might depend on how many stations that tv gets.”

“They’re called channels,” he offered, “and-”

Her phone started beeping and buzzing at her.

Ellie looked down at it, shimmying across the counter between them. Then she looked at him, as he stared back quietly and took another bite of naan.

She picked it up and looked at the screen. It said Tony Stark’s name on it.

_ Jesus _ , she thought.  _ This just wasn’t going to get any less complicated. _

She tapped what looked like the most likely ‘answer’ button on the screen, and put it to her ear, absentmindedly glancing at Ian as though she needed him to tell her how to answer a simple call.

But, she noticed, she was annoyingly calmer when he gave a tiny nod.

“Hello,” she said.

“Is this Eleanor Rogers?” the voice was more sing-songy than she was used to, less business-like. But there was no denying the familiar smugness in it.

“Speaking. This is a... Tony Stark, then?”

“Ah, it’s one of them, yes. As it turns out. That’s definitely weird to me, is that weird to you?”

“Uhhh,” she said, “yeah.”

“Yeah. Right. Let’s call it weird. Well. I know you’ve already gotten the SHIELD poke and prod special, Ellie. I don’t want to railroad you into anything you’re uncomfortable with. But I’ll get straight to the point. I’m just dying to pick your brain on some issues. Just as a… as a science nerd. You know? Peek into the whole mirror galaxies thing going on here. With your help. And, I suspect, I could offer you some answers that you might find useful. No needles, for either of us. No big procedures. Just some questions. Maybe just a magnet or two, nothing taxing. So. Oh, hi, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” she said, brow furrowed. She looked at Ian, who seemed amused at her expression.

“Have you had supper yet?” Tony asked.

“Yeah, we just ate actually,” Ellie replied.

“Great, you free for dessert? Bring your people, we’ll open a nice bottle of wine. Hang on a minute. Have you had *doughnuts*? This is a critically important question. I really should have started with it, to be honest.”

“I’ve had doughnuts,” she said quickly, to get a word in and slow him down. “I would not say not to more doughnuts. I guess. And uhhh…”

Ellie covered the phone with her hand and looked to Ian with a furrowed brow. It was just Tony. She couldn’t imagine Tony Stark being counted among the bad guys. But it was still weird seeing him - seeing any of them in their weird doppleganger states - at all. She wouldn’t mind having back up.

“Are you free?” She mouthed to him.

Ian looked like he understood, and nodded.

Ellie examined him a split second, as he reached for his glass. “Thank you,” she mouthed. He lifted his glass to her and took a drink.

“Yeah,” she said into the phone. “Okay, two to join you for doughnuts. Or whatever. When? What time?”

“I can have a car to you in ten minutes. Where are you, Ian’s apartment?”

“... yes.”  _ So, everybody still knows everybody’s business here too, then? _

“Great!” Tony said. “Then I’ll meet you soon.”

Something about the enthusiasm in his voice when she said yes… it settled some of her tension. It sounded like her own Tony, making a discovery or finishing a new build. Her Tony, who deserved better than what he got.

“Sounds good,” she said, and she hung up.

Ian studied her. “How close were you to Tony back home?” he asked.

“He’s the one that got me walking again. Built my pin systems. Showed me a lot of things.” Ellie could feel spare parts of electrical equipment in her hands again, as she thought about the Tony Stark she knew.

“Tony had bits and pieces of useless stuff around his lab,” Ellie mused. “Well, he would decree some of them useless, when he was done with them, or done trying to use them.”

She took a giant bite of naan, and Ian patiently waited again.

“Something about them being useless,” Ellie said. “And shiny. I just… fell in love with random bits of wiring and tubing and casing. Gleaming metal that had no purpose.”

She stirred her food, reminiscing.

“He taught me how to use a soldering gun, and then later a welding torch,” she said, “and I would mash together all manner of things. Try to make the most intricate thing I could manage that would fit in the palm of my hand. Or, or make something as long as a train car. They were all useless, every last piece. I liked that about them.”

“Sounds like a great luxury,” Ian said, somewhat wistfully. “Useless, shiny things.”

She remembered some of Ian’s brief interactions with her Tony, too. Ian had butted up against Tony’s stubbornness and paranoia pretty quickly. “Tony was a good man,” she insisted. “He was… broken…” The memory of some of his more rousing drinking binges came back to her. “In that way only a good man can be broken, I think.”

“Well,” Ian said quietly. “This one has better toys, but that assessment might not be too far off.”

Ellie pocketed her phone.

“Oh!” Ian exclaimed, jogging over to a jacket he’d thrown on a barstool. “I have your things, I’m sorry I forgot to give them to you.”

“My things?” she repeated.

“Well, it’s just a few items,” Ian said. “What we had on us when we got here. In our pockets and such.”

He gripped a small, black plastic bag, in turn wrapped around a few small items. He opened it and found a flat, soft, black plastic baggie, about the size of the credit cards they had here.

“What the hell is this?” He muttered.

“Oh! That’s my fire paper,” She said.

“Your what?” Ian asked.

“Fire paper,” she repeated. “It’s… it’s honestly mostly a kid’s toy. That’s why Tony made it for me, originally. But then he made it bigger and bigger, to see if he could. Sometimes it’s handy.”

She opened it, and sniffed. It still smelled right… like a cross between mint and an oil fire.

“Uuhh…” She looked around for something solid to put the paper on. She settled for the thick carton that the paneer had been in. It was already scraped clean, so she put a sheet of the paper in it. Then she picked up her water and dribbled a little in.

The water beaded on the paper and disappeared. Ellie kept watching, so a confused Ian did too, and a few seconds later a flame caught, then quivered, then shot up about a foot and a half. Ian hopped backwards and gave a tiny grunt. His eyes darted around - possibly looking for supplies to contain the fire that was now slightly larger than she anticipated. But the carton had no other fuel, and the flame began burning out fast.

The carton itself, though, was beginning to warp.

Ellie said a little prayer to no one in particular that she didn’t set the bar on fire, right as an alarm went off. Ian darted across the kitchen, pulled a disc off the wall and popped a small cube out of the back. That stopped the alarm.

“That’s a little bigger than I remembered a full sheet being,’ She said apologetically as the fire died down quickly.

“Wow.” Ian looked at her, shocked.

"Come on,” she said, a little surprised at the size of his response. “They don’t have anything here like that?”

“I don’t know, maybe. That’s just… that burns long enough to catch something else on fire.” He ran a hand across his hair. “Or if you kept hold of it? That’s long enough to do significant damage.”

“That’s why I put it on the carton,” she said emphatically. Then she slipped the baggie into her bra.

“What… the hell are you doing?” Ian said.

“What? I just said it’s handy,” Ellie said. “When I’m camping, or bored, or need to burn or melt something tiny. It doesn’t last very long. You can start it with spit too! It might still be handy, if interdimensional travel didn’t somehow ruin the rest. They smell right, though.”

“You’re pressing it against your skin?” he cried. “You’re storing it… against your skin. You could get hurt! Can sweat set it off? Do you know?”

“Uh… probably not?” she offered.

“That’s, wow. That… is just… so incredibly irresponsible,” he asserted.

“Irresponsible?” she repeated back. “Are you kidding me?”

“Did you have it there the whole time? When we fought Hydra? You could have been so badly hurt. You could have died.”

“I nearly did!”

“That doesn’t make this a more responsible action to take, Ellie.”

“First of all, remove that scolding tone from your voice,” she fumed. His posture didn’t change; he looked like he’d hold his ground. “Second, this is no different than your own hotheadedness. I have absolutely no idea where you get off having the gall to lecture me about any sort of responsibleness.”

“Look, I’m just trying to suggest, maybe temper your risk-taking,” he mused into his food, “when you drag me into your secret Resistance lair when you thought I was Captain Hydra, of all people-”

“YOUR BACK WAS BROKEN,” Ellie yelled. “How was I supposed to guess you’re a regenerating freak?”

Ian held up his hands, in some gesture in between conceding the point and calming his own rage.

“This argument is pointless,” he finally said quietly.

“You started it,” Ellie said.

“Real mature,” Ian said.

“My maturity level is irrelevant to the fact that you started all this, calling me irresponsible.”

“I’m just-” Ian started in a loud, tense tone, and stopped himself.

He leaned back from her.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said quietly, “I didn’t mean to shout.” 

“You didn’t shout,” Ellie said matter of factly. “You scolded. Which is more infuriating.”

“Ellie. I just…” he trailed off before finally murmuring, “... worry.”

Ian tried to just breathe for a minute. Ellie let him. And tried some deep breaths herself.

He tried again. “The irresponsibility crack was… slightly misguided.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow.

“My intentions were friendly,” he said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

At that, Ellie really did try to calm herself down a bit. She nodded that she’d heard him.

“Let’s… you need the rest of your stuff here,” he said. And he reached back into the bag.

He had procured her an ID card and a passport.  _ It feels like they snapped this picture of me months ago _ , she thought.  _ Was it just yesterday? _

The bag included a random belt that she vaguely remembered holding something against her abdomen, at one point. She had no idea where Ian would have gotten it. He also pulled out a knife of hers -- a favorite that she was very happy to see again. There were a few other odd and ends… and a ring.

Ian’s face softened as he pulled the small silver ring out of a tiny plastic storage bag. He very gently handed it to her.

Ellie stared at it in his hand before taking it.

Her dad had given it to her on her seventeenth birthday. It would be the last birthday she’d have with him. She happened to be wearing it on the night they were killed. There was other jewelry she’d lost that day… left in her room, trusting too much that they would spend longer at that location. But her own actions had attracted symbiotes, and Zola’s people. So everything, including her family, came to an end in that cave.

“I wore this while making rounds that night,” she said. “When I found you.”

Ian was quiet.

“My dad gave it to me,” Ellie said.

“I’m glad you have it, then.”

“Me too.”

She had nothing of her mother’s. Nothing to remember her by, except her own inherited stubborn streak. Ellie sighed. Things with mom would be more complicated. As per usual.


	3. The Doughnuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Ellie finds a foothold in this new world - and Ian helps - some odd things start happening...

Tony’s rather sedate car and driver dropped them right at the door of an unremarkable, aging warehouse in a quiet neighborhood. 

Ian looked confused at the location, which worried Ellie. She immediately regretted leaving her knife at home.

As they approached the door, an ordinary looking section of the door jamb lit up with a pale blue.

There was a click, barely audible. Ian tried the door, and it opened. He held it open for her. 

Inside they found a small, nondescript room with an empty desk, two lit wall sconces and two cameras mounted on the ceiling. There was another door across from them, with a similar panel that lit up at their arrival. So they moved through that one too.

Ellie wasn’t entirely surprised to then find herself walking into a gleaming, high-tech lab, despite how different it was from her own Tony’s resources. It had always felt like such a defining characteristic of her Tony’s life that his father had been taken by Zola’s forces - captured and killed for refusing to follow orders, the family money stolen away. Her Tony carried rage and bitterness about that, as long as she’d known him. It felt to her like that rage built a lot of who he was. She had to imagine that that single dynamic being different in this world could make for a very different Tony Stark. One with a shiny, expensive lab.

“Come in, guys!” Ellie heard the same voice say… this one chipper and self-assured.

They made their way around some tables cluttered with unidentifiable gadgets and parts, and found Tony.

A shinier Tony, Ellie thought. Like his lab.

Sleeves still rolled up, tools still in his hand, facial hair still unfortunate. But completely different. Limbs intact. Eyes brighter. Shoes clearly very expensive.

“Tony, I presume,” Ellie said. She extended her hand and squared her hips. If she couldn’t reach an easy emotional foothold in all these goings on around her, maybe she could find a physical one.

“Ellie.” He took her hand. “Jesus, you look so much like both of them,” Tony said in awe. “I suppose you get that a lot.”

“A bit less so, now that they’re both dead,” Ellie replied.

“Fair enough,” Tony said, with a hint of regret. “Ian, how’s it hanging, man?”

Ian shook his hand casually. “Hey, Tony.”

“Well,” Tony said, as he clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to the doughnuts!”

  
  
  


Ellie was soon working on her fifth doughnut, curled up on a glossy leather couch more comfortable than it looked, in a lounge area off the main lab. She’d shared more than she intended about her home world… but there wasn’t any strategic reason to hold back, none that she could determine. 

This Tony was hospitable, and charming. And harder to trust, Ellie decided. She wasn’t sure why. She also realized, as he got up to head to his on-site wine cellar, that she resented him having so many resources. The lab lounge had plush carpet and ridiculously fancy wallpaper. She didn’t imagine him having to work as hard as her Tony did for what he had.

“How well do you know this guy?” Ellie whispered, while Tony was away.

“Tony?” Ian asked, and shrugged. “Tony’s Tony. Dad’s known him for ages, and trusts him with a lot of things. Why?”

“Nothing,” Ellie said. “Nothing wrong, this is all just… bizarre.”

“I imagine it’s got to be,” Ian said sympathetically.

“I love this vintage,” Tony called out as he returned with two bottles and a corkscrew. “The subtlety of the chocolate in it is amazing.”

“You’ve got chocolate wine here?” Ellie asked.

“Not exactly,” Tony replied. “Join me in here,” he said, and he headed back out into the lab. Ian and Ellie followed suit.

Tony poured three glasses of the deep red liquid - apparently he kept wine glasses in his lab? - and curiosity got the best of Ellie. She decided to start overtly poking around his work. If he didn’t want her to, he’d have to get her to stop.

Tony didn’t make any moves to get in her way.

She recognized electrical relays and panels. She recognized robotic levers, and tools for building them. The style was vaguely similar to her Tony’s way of thinking.

Eventually, she found glass tubing - always one of her favorite things to play with. She rolled a short, smooth piece between her fingers as she worked to form questions for Tony.

“So you inherited your dad’s fortune?” she asked.

“I did,” Tony answered, “and grew more myself. Stark Industries is a world leader in pretty much every bleeding edge of technology.”

Ian sat on a tabletop, legs spread, casually looking around and nursing his wine. “Is there a reason we’re not meeting you in the Tower tonight?” Ian asked Tony.

“Tower?” Tony asked blandly.

“Do you make weapons?” Ellie asked.

“We did, and then we didn’t,” Tony replied. “Weaponry was dad’s gig, originally. I don’t know exactly how things went down where you come from, but we had a pretty big war my dad’s generation fought, against Hydra-level bad guys in top world positions. Pure firepower was important.”

Ellie noticed for the first time that Tony seemed to measure his next words carefully. 

“I worked on more sophisticated, ostensibly less lethal, protection systems for a long while,” he said.

“But that’s changing?” Ellie intuited from his tone. “Why?”

“Bad guys are getting more powerful,” Tony said. “Sometimes you need big guns.”

His tone of voice sounded so eerily familiar. Ellie watched his facial expressions, his mannerisms, and looked around the lab.

She shook her head in disbelief.

“How is this even possible?” she asked suddenly. “Explain that to me. Okay, so there’s different dimensions where some similar planets might come into being, fine. But similar people? How many things have to go down *almost* the exact same way in two separate places for this to be true?”

She stared in exasperation at both men. Ian looked sympathetic. Tony chewed his lip and swirled his wine.

“How…” she continued.  “How can you be so much like my Tony and yet very, very clearly not be him?” she demanded. “Why can we even understand each other?”

“The only thing I’ve got to offer you here,” Tony said, “is an implausible, science fiction worthy, pie-in-the-sky theory that’s been around a while.”

Ellie took a breath, and a swallow of wine.

“The idea is,” Tony began, “that at every single point in time, there is a separate dimension created by every single separate possibility in that moment. Every single option of what could happen. Every moment of multiple possibilities sends yet another set of dimensions flying out into this absurd existence. Positing that this theory is true would mean that there aren’t just a few alternate dimensions, but that there are in fact, an immeasurable number of separate universes.”

Ellie listened, absorbed, and then decided to take another drink.

“Think of it as a tree of consequences, right?” Tony said. “You get up today, you select a certain shirt to wear. There’s another entire universe that exists because you chose to wear a different shirt, or chose a different path to work that day. Or, a certain weather system emerges. Something affects it, sending it more to the right or to the left. Boom. Different dimensions.”

“You think that explains this?” Ian asked.

“I think it’s the best theory I’ve got right now,” Tony said. “Mostly because it’s the only theory I’ve got right now.” He shrugged. “I certainly think it’s possible.”

“That doesn’t explain the similarities,” Ellie said.

“It might,” Tony gently offered. “Think of it this way. So Hydra builds New York, in your dimension, as you said. Big divergence from us. But then a lot of other stuff in that timeline happens to go down the same way it did here.” Tony gestures with his hands. “Maybe… maybe similar choices or events lead to a… a proximity, in time and space. A proximity, or… or something like a similar frequency, in whatever larger meta-stew of existence we’re all floating around in. Maybe this dimension was easier for you to find because of these similarities between us.”

Ian’s phone rang. He pulled it out and answered.

“Oh hey, dad,” Ian said into the phone. “Yeah.”

Ellie pondered Tony, and his answers. He met her gaze with curiosity and guardedness.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Ian said. “Where?”

He’d caught Ellie’s attention.

“Okay,” Ian continued warily. “I’ll check in with Ellie and we’ll head that way.”

Ian hung up, and looked searchingly into the distance for a moment. Just then, Tony’s phone lit up.

“That’ll be dad,” Ian said, and he softly reached for Ellie’s arm. Tony withdrew to take the call.

“What’s going on?” Ellie asked.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think some hot spots in this world were hotter than I realized. Something’s going down, and dad wants us to meet him.”

“Okay. Makes as much sense as anything does right now, I guess.”

They left unceremoniously, without saying goodbye, and sat down in the car downstairs.

Ian leaned forward to talk to the driver, with a funny look on his face.

“Miss, we’d like to stop by my apartment first, and then... my dad wants us to meet him at his house, upstate. Can you take us there?”

“Yes, very good, sir,” Tony’s driver said.

Ian slowly leaned back. Ellie was concerned, but she waited until the partition had slid up between them and the driver. Before speaking she looked around and found a control panel with a mute button.

“You’re being weird, what’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know why dad is summoning us.”

“But something’s got you worried.”

“I just…” he trailed off, obviously still thinking things through. “I don’t know anything about this house we’re going to, my parent’s house. And dad thought I did.” He furrowed his brow. “The driver apparently knows more about where my parents live than I do.”

“Maybe they just moved in? How long were you gone?”

Ian shook his head. “Not that long. Nor have they mentioned moving. And another thing… Tony works in a tower. Avengers Tower. Has for ages. Not only did we not meet there, but he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Ellie wondered what it could mean.

“You don’t think…” Ellie started.

“This feels like home,” Ian offered, anticipating what she was going to say. “This is my home. I think.” He looked out a dark window. “It’s just… different.”

They rode the rest of the way back to the apartment in silence.

 

 

They gathered weapons and clothes and got back in the car, to be taken to a house Ian had only recently learned existed.

Ellie realized that she would meet this world’s Sharon Carter shortly. If she were honest with herself, she wasn’t looking forward to it. Mom was… complicated enough, without a doppleganger.

Ian looked withdrawn. Ellie put a hand on his arm.

“Listen. Ian.”

Deep worry was subtly etched on Ian’s face. At her words, he swung around to look at her.

“You will know the man and woman who raised you. You know it in your heart,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how many dimensions Tony says there might be. It doesn’t matter how many Steves or Sharons there might be. You’ll know. I know, when I look into people’s eyes here. I know. They weren’t there, in my memories. That isn’t them. Your experiences are important. They matter. People aren’t interchangeable. Even if there’s another Ian or another Ellie somewhere, with loved ones waiting for them… we’d know.”

Ian looked in her eyes, and some of his panic worry seemed to abate.

“When you see them,” Ellie said, “and really look in their eye, you’ll know for sure. Alternate dimensions don’t explain everything. We’ll get there. They’ll give us their intel. And I… I trust you, Ian. We’ll figure it out.”

His eyes softened.

“You trust me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said earnestly.

“Well, I question your judgment in people, then,” Ian said. “But okay.”

He offered his closest fist, softly, and she tapped the back of it with her own.


	4. The House

A couple hours later, they arrived in a cozy, tree-lined land where every leaf seemed imbued with warmth and hospitality, even in the evening starlight. They rolled into a curved driveway that brought them to a long, covered porch with string lights and perfect looking little lanterns.

Ellie couldn’t imagine a more idyllic home to return to. She felt a brief twinge of sadness for Ian that it would feel as foreign to him as it did to her.

Then Ellie watched her own mother run out to greet Ian, and she froze, nauseous. 

No. Not her mother.

But more than anyone she’d met, this woman was the closest to being Ellie’s, to being Sharon Carter from Ellie’s old life. Same hair, same hairstyle. Same age. Same lines on her face. Same self-assured strides. Same commanding presence, leadership oozing out of her every pore.

This could be her own mother. She could be the woman who trained Ellie in combat and found her toys to play with as a child. And who died brutally, protecting Ellie a few days ago.

Steve… this world’s Steve... was on the porch. Eventually Ellie’s legs worked again, and she aimed herself numbly in his direction.

But before she got to him, she met Ian and Sharon, arms around each other on the steps.

“Ellie, darling,” Sharon said. “I’m so glad you’re safe, after all that’s happened. Ian speaks very highly of you.”

Ellie smiled. The ridiculous boy seemed to talk her up everywhere.

Sharon came close and gently reached for her hand. When Ellie offered it, Sharon held it between hers tenderly.

“I can’t imagine all you’ve been through,” Sharon said. “But please, please think of this as a place you are always welcome to be.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

“Come join us, do you like lemonade?” Sharon asked.

“Um, yes, that would be lovely,” Ellie said. 

They reached the porch together. Steve smiled at her and pulled out a white wicker chair. Ellie sat in the chair, and Ian took one half of a hanging wooden swing close by.

She watched him look around and admire the house. He refrained from sharing his observations, though.

“So, what’s the big secret rush?” Ian said instead.

“Oh let’s not get into that yet,” Sharon said. “Plenty of time to manage work later. It’s a beautiful evening. Have you two gotten enough to eat? Ian’s constantly eating, Ellie, I don’t know what kind of appetite you may have. But we’ve saved some barbecue from Bucky’s last visit.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Ian replied. “Bucky’s pretty good with barbecue.”

“Great,” Ellie said. “Who’s Bucky?”

Everyone around her seemed to freeze for an instant, as they took in her apparently unexpected question.

“Dad’s best friend, Bucky,” Ian explained. With a tinge of sadness in his tone, he asked, “Did you not have one?”

“Oh.” Ellie thought back. “Yes. Uhh, Dad’s friend in the service. Barnes, right?”

“That’s right,” Steve said.

“He was…” The words caught in Ellie’s throat. “He was still Hydra. Is, still, I guess. He didn’t leave, like dad did.” _ And he’s probably still alive _ .

She looked around, and they were all watching her, and waiting. As uncomfortable as it was, Ellie suspected that sharing more information more often might get her more intel that was useful to her. She tried to get looser with her stories.

“I met him once,” Ellie continued. “He had a really terrifying, cybernetic arm.”

“A cybernetic arm?” Steve asked mildly. “Wow. That does sound intense.”

“I wonder what happened there,” Sharon mused. “I’ll be right back with food.”

“Oh I’ll help,” Steve said.

“Thank you, dear,” Sharon replied.

As Ellie watched Steve pass by them and go inside with Sharon, she realized Ian’s face was white.

Ellie’s alarm level shot up, and she was speechless for a moment. Ian just shook his head slowly.

“Ian, tell me,” she finally managed. “I trust your gut. What’s going on?”

He set his jaw and turned toward her.

“These are my parents,” he whispered. “I’m certain. But something is very, very different here.”

Sharon returned with drinks and silverware, and they made small talk until Steve returned with the reheated barbecue.

“Guys,” Ian said, as he slowly approached some slices of brisket. “I know you just want us to relax, but it’s obvious there’s something going on. So, can we just talk that out? Decide what happens next? I think Ellie and I both could relax a bit more once we do that.”

“Ian, you’re right,” Steve said. “Here’s what’s happened.” He leaned in and clasped his hands together in front of him. “Latverian forces made a surprise attack on NATO soldiers stationed in three different neighboring countries, all at once. Doom now holds those bases, and significant territory in those countries.”

Ian took a breath. “Wow.”

Steve nodded his head diplomatically.

“So,” Ian said, “Why are you not at any of those places, either one of you?”

“Ian, there’s no need to be rude,” Sharon said.

“I’m not being rude,” Ian said, looking confused. “I’ve just… met you both.”

“Well your father isn’t in a condition to fight right now.” She nodded at the de-serumed Steve. “And I’ve been asked to stay out of things, for the moment. There’s plenty of personnel that can handle this.”

Ellie ate, and watched as the conversation unfolded a bit differently than she expected. They weren’t mean to each other, nor were they overly tender. Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary without Ian’s comments. But, something felt… off.

“Of course,” Ian said, hardly looking convinced. “So what’s the response?”

“The President feels as though things will resolve themselves, essentially,” Steve said, matter-of-factly. “Doom has unfinished business with neighbors, and it’ll sort itself out.”

“That sounds pretty damn ridiculous to me,” Ian replied.

Steve winced a bit. “In this case, I think he’s right.”

Ian stared at him. “Then why summon Ellie and I?”

If Steve had something to say, Sharon stopped him.

“Ian, I know how much arguing with your father is a favorite pastime, but I won’t tolerate it today. Ellie is in need of a calm place to relax, and I won’t have you yelling.”

Ian obviously swallowed some words back, at his mother’s admonition. Ellie felt he might have kept going under normal circumstances. But something about these circumstances wasn’t normal.

“I’m sorry, mom,” Ian said gently. “I’ll let it go.”

They spent the rest of the meal chatting idly... about the weather, the neighborhood, and old friends. Ellie had felt a bit more comfortable while they were nearly fighting with each other.

  
  
  


Eventually, Sharon and Steve decided they needed a walk alone in the backyard. Ian and Ellie held down the porch, quietly sorting through their observations.

“If it’s not an alternate dimension, then what else could have happened?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t know,” Ian said, with a bite to his tone. “Some of the guys at dad’s work, they play with the timeline every other day. Could it be same dimension, different timeline?”

“Maybe. What do you think is happening with these invasions?”

“That’s the most incomprehensible thing out of all of this,” Ian told her. “We just sat at a table with Sharon Carter and Steve Rogers and they explained to us why they  _ obviously  _ wouldn’t be fighting in an active hotspot. Do you believe that?”

“Yeah, that was bordering on creepy,” Ellie said.

“Okay, so. Something’s wrong. We’re agreed.”

“We just gotta figure out what it is,” Ellie said sharply. “And also how to fix it.”

“Easy peasy,” Ian said ruefully, taking another gulp of lemonade. “We’ve already ruled out alternate dimensions!”

“Oh gross, you really are an optimist.”

Ian bared his teeth in an exaggerated smile.

 

  
  
Later, Ellie finally located a bed. The boys had excused themselves in various directions to sleep, and Sharon escorted Ellie to the guest bedroom.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see you while you were still in the hospital,” Sharon said as she laid more blankets on the bed. “But then,” she continued, “I really pondered how much of an entourage it was best for you to wake up to.”

“That’s a fair question,” Ellie nodded.

“SHIELD take care of you alright?” She asked.

“They did,” Ellie replied, “though it sounds like Ian and his miracle goo did most of the work.”

Sharon looked surprised. “The regenerative substance, from his suit?” she replied.

“The very same,” Ellie said. “Apparently it’ll cure quite a few things, at least for me.”

“Well, that is a bit of a surprise. Though I suppose it shouldn’t be,” Sharon mused.  “Individual genetics wouldn’t necessarily entirely negate all the benefits of the salve.”

“I guess I’m glad Ian was as desperate for a partner as he was.”

“He’s a good kid, and a smart one,” Sharon smiled. “We’re lucky to have him.”

“So you and… Steve, you never had biological kids together?” Ellie asked.

“We didn’t,” Sharon said. “Just never seem to happen for us.”

“Did you want them?” Ellie prodded as she sat down on the bed.

Sharon studied her, and slowly smiled. “I think any freedom that a woman has, complicates her relationship to motherhood.”

Ellie thought she should probably feel taken aback at the strangeness of Sharon’s answer, and the lack of effusive affection. But the strained familiarity of her tone and demeanor felt a bit comforting.

“I don’t want to speak for anyone else but me,” Sharon continued, giving Ellie a meaningful glance. “I certainly would have enjoyed knowing any child Steve and I had and raised together. And... also, alongside that... my career has been very important to me.”

“You sound like her,” Ellie said reflexively.

“Did she have a career important to her as well?”

“She had a cause,” Ellie replied wistfully. 

Then she realized the implications of her words.

“She loved me,” Ellie said, mortified, suddenly needing to defend her own Sharon. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

“Of course, I know she did,” Sharon said, in the softest voice she’d had all day.

“Family is the most important thing. I always knew that. I just…” Ellie felt she’d made a mess of the conversation, of Sharon’s impression of her mother… of her own memories, somehow. This wasn’t the way she wanted this conversation to go.

Ellie cleared her throat and asked, “What do you do?”

Sharon’s face subtly lit up, and she sat down on the bed. “Right now I’m the deputy director of SHIELD, overseeing European and Asian operations and liaising with their intelligence.”

Ellie instinctively mistrusted anything that sounded that official. But she thought maybe it was time to be less honest and more flattering.

“That sounds very important to everyone’s safety,” Ellie said.

“Well, we try,” she grinned. “The world has gotten complicated.”

“So, European intelligence is…” Ellie offered, “keeping you up to date on the Latverian situation?”

Sharon’s smile hollowed out just a tiny bit. “Yes.” She searched just a bit for words. “We’re keeping out of it. For now.”

“That makes sense,” Ellie nodded. It didn’t. But maybe she could manage a sliver of subterfuge.

“Well, tell me about yourself, Ellie,” Sharon smiled.

Ellie was momentarily quite angry, though she wasn’t sure why. She looked at Sharon - comfortable in her own home, not a hair out of place, proud of her position, and so strongly resembling - in so many ways - someone who had so frequently intimidated the hell out of Ellie, with her tenacity and drive and purpose and reputation.

And she wondered what to say about herself… wondered if there was a single thing to say about herself that wasn’t actually about her parents, or her long gone world, her dead friends, or her trauma, or her suspicions of this new world she found herself in.

“I’m tired,” she said.

Sharon eyebrows shot up.

“I’m actually suddenly very tired,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, of course!” Sharon exclaimed as she stood up. “Oh, I’ve imposed. Of course you’re tired, you’ve had some exhausting days. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Thank you for all your hospitality,” Ellie said.

Sharon smiled at the door. “Don’t hesitate to get me if you need anything.”

And then Ellie was alone, with a bed that caught her when she quickly passed out.

 

  
  
Ellie heard raised voices as she woke up, still clothed on top of the covers. She padded downstairs barefoot and headed to the warmth of the kitchen.

“-no reason you’re here, much less any reason we should be prisoners!” Ian yelled.

“Son, you’re not prisoners, why on earth would you say that?” Steve responded.

“Dad, if you won’t let us go, what the hell else are we?”

“Ian, lower your voice when you’re speaking to us,” Sharon said. “Steve, surely they can head into town and run some errands for us.”

"Oh gee, Mom, do we really have your permission to do that?” Ian said, slamming his chair back and leaving, blowing past Ellie to return upstairs.

They exchanged wordless looks as he flew past.

Ellie threw on a smile and entered the kitchen.

“So did I miss breakfast?” she asked.

Sharon was quiet, arms folded, but Steve moved to get her food.

“Absolutely not,” he said quietly. “Please let me fix you a plate.”

She sat down and didn’t have to wait long, as Steve soon brought a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast.

He looked thrilled to be handing her food, and she felt her heart melt. She smiled back. Her dad had always been just as imposing as her mother, in his own way. But they’d found a way to specialize in cuddly affection. Things seemed to be pretty similar on this side of the dimensional scramble dividing line as well.

She’d finished her eggs and half her toast when Ian arrived in the doorway to the front of the house, with her shoes in his hands.

“We’ve got several errands to run before lunch,” he said. “You ready?”

“Ian!” Steve said in a gentle exasperation. “No need to rush her. Please don’t be this way, son.”

“No it’s fine… Steve,” Ellie said. “It’s okay. Might as well get them done, right?”

Steve nodded reluctantly at her decision. She scooped up her bacon, grabbed her shoes out of Ian’s hands, and left.

She struggled to keep up with him and get a shoe on her right foot, as he strode toward the garage.

“What are we going to do, take their car?” She huffed as she jogged badly.

“Not exactly,” Ian said.

They entered a side door to the large garage, and immediately came upon the prettiest motorcycle Ellie had ever seen -- all sleek black and chrome.

“Oh my,” she murmured, as she stuffed her napkinful of bacon in her pocket.

Ian found keys nearby, and tossed her a helmet as soon as her hands were empty. She climbed on behind him after he straddled the bike, and they pulled out into the driveway.

Right when Ellie thought he’d accelerate to leave the property, Ian stopped and got off the bike. He ducked around a wide window unseen, and came back with their belongings all bagged up.

He didn’t intend for them to return.

He threw them into a small side compartment of the bike, hopped back on and and they sped away.

  
  
  


Ellie didn’t try to speak until they stopped at a gas station a few miles away. Ian parked near a pump so they could top off the tank.

“So where the hell are we going?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

“Well Jesus, Ian, I’m not just another bag for you to throw on the bike!” Ellie snapped.

He looked shocked, then a bit embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, I…” He trailed off.

“You don’t know where we’re going, do you?” she asked.

Ian shook his head sheepishly. Ellie sighed, and thought.

“Fill up and go buy me a soda,” she said. “I’ll be waiting over there. We can TALK.”

She walked away, and sat at a bench alongside the gas station, in front of an attached restaurant of some sort. She watched her shoes make patterns in the dirt until Ian arrived to join her.

He sat down with an apologetic, conciliatory slump, and offered her a green bottle of clear liquid in one hand, and a red bottle of brown liquid in the other.

She took the green bottle, got it open and took a swig.

“This is just so… deeply unsettling,” Ian mumbled. “For as long as I can remember, Mom and Dad were the only thing I could ever count on. Even when absolutely every other thing in my life was terrifying.”

“I’m sorry,” she said earnestly. He looked miserable.

“And now it’s not even them!” he cried. “I mean it is. I don’t… Jesus. The spectrum of who is or isn’t our loved ones is completely recalibrated, isn’t it?”

He savagely shoved a hand through his hair again and again, sometimes grabbing and pulling it, as though if he tried hard enough he could wring some understanding out of it.

“It’s them. I know it is,” he finally said. “I’d bet my life on it. No question. There’s just something else… terribly wrong here.”

“We need allies,” Ellie said. “We don’t have enough intel here yet. Who else do you trust?”

“There’s no one else I’d trust more than Dad. And Mom.”

“Does anybody else you know here have a moral compass that you can always count on?” she asked in the most supportive, encouraging tone she could muster.

Ian was quiet a moment. He twisted the top off his drink and took a swig.

“Well,” he said. “When you put it that way.”


	5. The Ally

Ellie had only met her world’s Sam Wilson a couple of times. He was the leader of a another cell of the Resistance… or had been. He technically answered to her dad, but he was inventive enough and far away enough that he ran his own group. They had done a lot to help the people nearest them. And shortly before Ellie’s mom and dad gave their lives, Wilson had sacrificed himself taking out a dangerous new experimental weapon of Zola’s.

Wilson had been somebody who felt like… like somebody Ellie could maybe resemble one day. If she had ever gotten any better at being a revolutionary. Not that he was any less competent than her parents - no less skilled, no less committed.

He just felt more... human.

Maybe that was because she saw less of of him. Or maybe it was because his legend wasn’t as overwhelming. She wasn’t sure.

She did know that she couldn’t ever remember being this exhausted… not ever, in a very exhausting life. She hoped this Sam was a friend.

Ellie and Ian showed up, unannounced, knocking on this Sam’s apartment door. It had rained recently there, and the lingering mugginess made Ellie’s clothes cling to her in an unpleasant way.

The door opened and Sam took in the sight of them, throwing a mildly cautious look at Ellie, and offering a strained look of recognition to Ian.

“I need your help,” Ian said, without preamble.

Sam wasn’t rude, but he wasn’t friendly. He nodded curtly, and stepped aside to let them both in.

Ellie recognized the living space of a soldier right away - neat and tidy, and minimalist. Sam had more style than Ian did, though, with a gently inviting decor. The most striking element was a bright red, white and blue circular shield hanging on a wall in the hallway. Ellie had never seen it before, but immediately recognized it as this world’s version of her father’s famous shield. The colors weren’t orange and green, because he wasn’t ever Captain Hydra here. That much she could figure out. What took a bit longer to sort out was why it was here, and not at Steve’s side.

“Dad tell you I was back, then?” Ian said.

“Yeah, he did. And I was glad to hear it,” Sam offered. “You ready to swing back into action?”

Ian raised an eyebrow, taken aback. “You still want a partner?”

Sam set his jaw. “Streets are still tough, and I’m willing to bet you’re still very good,” he said. “Personality notwithstanding.”

“Right,” Ian said.

Sam squinted thoughtfully at Ian, then took Ellie in with a softer gaze. “Something tells me that’s not why you’re here, though.”

Sam looked ready to introduce himself to Ellie - partly out of politeness and partly out for something to do with the unspoken tension - when Ian interrupted him.

“Why are mom and dad sitting in a house upstate?” Ian demanded. “When there’s major unrest happening? What’s gone on since I left? What… what’s the change in the damn air we’re breathing?”

Ellie watched Sam carefully. He didn’t look surprised, or confused at Ian’s questions.

“You know something, Sam,” Ian demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said. “How about we all just relax. No need to get stressed.”

Ian’s bile got stirred up, but Ellie stopped him saying more with a raised hand palm. She looked Sam in the eye.

“I think you’re right,” Ellie abruptly said to Sam. “I think Ian’s an overworked mess.”

Ian looked at her, startled.

She continued her train of thought. “I mean, we probably all just need to chill, right?”

“Sounds about right,” Sam said, holding her gaze.

“You got any coffee here?” Ellie asked.

“Nah, not here,” Sam said. “But there’s a place down the street with a decent cup of coffee.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Ellie suggested.

Ian reluctantly agreed. “Fine,” he said, as he smoothed his jacket. Sam disappeared for a moment and came back with his hands stuffed in jacket pockets.

They were out the door and three doors down before anyone said anything else.

“You think your place is bugged?” Ian ventured to ask Sam.

“Like I said inside, I don’t know anything,” Sam said. “But I’ve got suspicions, same as you.”

They ducked into a small cafe, a mom and pop shop with mismatched sofas and plush chairs. They all ordered coffee and found a booth near the back, sitting in awkward silence for a few more minutes.

“About three weeks ago,” Sam started, “I had a weird day. There must have been four different things before lunch that day that just felt… off. Not right.”

“How so?” Ellie asked.

Sam leaned forward, took a good look at her, and smiled warmly.

“Your name is Ellie?” he said, extending a hand.

“Oh, yeah, we skipped the pleasantries,” she replied, shaking his hand.

“That’s alright,” Sam said. “Getting reintroduced all day long to strange dopplegangers of people you knew has got to wear you down after while.” 

“You’re... Sam Wilson, then, I guess.”

He nodded. “I’m fairly certain of that, most days.”

Sam pulled a small notebook out of his pocket, and handed it to Ian.

“I thought at first that there might be something wrong with me. Who knows, maybe I had a stroke,” Sam said. “I’d watch the news, and feel like I was going crazy when they’d say something that should have been fairly indisputable fact, like where long-established borders between countries were. Or I’d be on the train, and the route would be slightly different than what it feels like it’s been all my life.”

“So you wrote it all down, looking for patterns,” Ellie said.

“Something like that,” Sam said. “I began to realize, some of it…”

Sam trailed off. Ellie looked to Ian, who watched Sam with a tight jaw and soft eyes. She curled her hands around her coffee cup, and took solace in the warmth of it.

“Most of… most of IT… these phenomena... center around objective, unemotional facts,” Sam gently pressed the edge of his hand to the table to emphasize the last few words. “It hasn’t touched on interpersonal relationships much. Except for a few. Except for with your dad,” he looked up at Ian.

Ian nodded.

“Something’s shifted,” Sam said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“He’s my dad,” Ian said. “He’s absolutely the man who raised me. Not like...” He turned a hand toward Ellie.

“No, I gotcha,” Sam said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t entertain the notion. But I’ll buy your observation. I do think he’s the same man I’ve always known. Sharon too… longtime, good friend. Still the exact same stubborn streak in her.”

Sam seem to trail off in thought.

“Any others?” Ellie asked. “Who are different?”

Sam met her gaze. “Barnes. Whatever’s different, he’s the most changed.”

“Yeah,” Ian quietly agreed.

“Changed how?” Ellie asked.

With a far off look in his eyes, Sam slowly shook his head. “I don’t know exactly, not yet.”

“When did you first observe these changes?” Ellie asked.

“Morning of October 12, near as I could ascertain,” Sam said.

“And has it fluctuated at all in content, or intensity?” Ellie asked.

“Not really,” Sam said. “Pretty steady since then.”

“Okay,” Ellie said, “okay, this is good. You guys, keep on this. I need to use the little dimensional refugees room.”

“Back through the kitchen, actually behind the coffee pots,” Sam pointed.

Ellie followed his instructions. She first limped past a patiently smiling waitstaff in the kitchen, then ducked out a tall, narrow side door and finally found herself in a small courtyard, shared with businesses on either side of and behind the coffee shop. There was a bathroom off to one side of the courtyard. 

She locked the door and took care of business, carefully avoiding pools of rainwater that had been tracked onto the bathroom floor.

She took a moment at the mirror afterward to smooth her hair back and adjust her ponytail. She also took a moment to look herself in the eye. Seeing a sight as familiar as her own face - with her own self behind those eyes - nearly gave her a sense of vertigo. It didn’t happen much lately.

Then she opened the door and headed back toward the cafe. 

Had she been just a bit more absorbed with self pity, or with finding more questions to ask Sam, she might not have heard the distant sound.

But she’d been around too much fighting in her life.

She heard somebody get punched… probably in the stomach, she’d guess. The socking sound, followed instantly by the grunt of air leaving the lungs in pain.

That was it. No more sounds of impact.

With her next step she instinctively shifted into the shadows that stretched from the nearest courtyard wall. She looked around the courtyard – still hearing no follow-up - and noticed what looked to be an exit out onto another street.

If Sam and Ian were able to fight back, she truly believed she would have heard more fighting. 

She had no sightlines of the restaurant from here, no way of checking her hunch. No way of knowing who was inside the restaurant, who got them, or whether they’d be looking for her.

Was she leaping to conclusions? Had somebody just taken a swing at somebody, anywhere around, and it ended? Possibly. Hell, from all she could tell, either Sam or Ian might have just hauled off and socked the other. Their working relationship seemed strained at best.

Her gut told her that wasn’t it. It told her she needed to move, and quickly.

So she did. Quickly and quietly. She took the courtyard exit onto another street. Decision made.

She watched as carefully as she could to see if anyone was waiting for her out on the back street. If they were, it wasn’t immediately apparent. She nearly stumbled right into a homeless person sleeping by a pile of their belongings. She quickly slipped her new jacket off and traded it for the much older, grubbier jacket visible to her in the pile.

She slammed her phone against a trash can and threw it in - a hard resource to lose, but too easily trackable - and quickly caught up with a small crowd of people ahead of her.

Time for another round of her old pastime of crowd hopping. She’d spent hours playing this game at home.

She spent several blocks shifting surreptitiously from one crowd to the next, snatching wardrobe changes where she could. She was trained for this, to lose tails. She needed a semi-circuitous route, some crowd around her, and lots of patience.

She made certain to take a corner that took her to a street some distance away from Sam’s apartment, but with a sightline of the curb in front of it.

Ian’s motorcycle was already missing.

If she had needed confirmation, she had it. They had been taken. She was undoubtedly next.

She kept going, following her training. Walking calmly and inconspicuously. Keep stoic, keep emotions - and pain - hidden.

It was several blocks before the sting of losing Ian and Sam sunk in, and hurt badly. Ian had been her one ally in this world, and Sam felt like he could be another. A few more blocks of not limping, walking with hips as squared and nondescript as she could manage, and her foot was in agony.

Ellie had to come up with something, some next step. And she had no idea what.

She had never felt so lost, and alone.

She had nothing now.

She flashed back to that night, when her parents were attacked.  _ When they died _ , she thought.  _ Use the word, Ellie _ . She’d watched it all unfold. Her mother’s last words were to tell her how much she loved her.

She knew they loved her.

That night, she had sprinted away, at Ian’s insistence. And they had crawled into some empty warehouse. And she felt her world crash down around her. She saw no reason to go on. She even said it out loud, in front of Ian. Sharing her despair with a stranger.

He reminded her that her parents would want her to keep going. Ian reminded her that she was their dream come to life.

She hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, but she knew she was a huge part of why they did what they did, why they fought so hard. They wanted something better for her.

_ Well _ , she thought.  _ I may have found something better here. But I might have to fight for it. And I may have to fight for this Steve and Sharon. If Ian and Sam are right, they need help. _

She didn’t know what to do with that yet. But now somebody had Ian, and surely meant him harm. And she owed him. She might still be close to giving up on her own situation. But she couldn’t give up on him.

Sam had given her a date that he thought marked the beginning of the phenomena. That was all she had to go on, so she’d follow it.

She aimed her excruciating foot further down the road, and willed a bus stop to show up soon.

  
  
  


The bus driver told her how to get to the library. And she was quietly grateful at her paranoia around debit and credit cards, which had led directly to the small wad of cash she had with her. She ran a wadded bill through the machine on the bus, and relished the seat she could take.

Eventually, she stood ruefully at a carrell with her back to the front doors of the library building, wishing the computers you could use without a library card weren’t so exposed and vulnerable. But it was the best she could manage. So she started investigating.

Ellie had no idea what she was looking for, so she had to cast her net wide, skimming any news sources she could find with that date on it. She thought maybe she’d be safe skipping entertainment news… probably the answer wouldn’t be in there. But she kept a close eye on any financial, political, or - what the hell, she thought -  meteorological news from October 12. The written word was just different enough here to make it very, very challenging. She had never been a fast reader anyway, and had always had a hard time taking in written information. It was yet another way she’d always imagined she failed her parents. But she tried to put that out of her mind.

She pored over stock prices, treaties and sanctions, traffic jams, tornadoes and tsunami warnings, mergers and acquisitions, and more. Nothing caught her eye.

After searching for what seemed like hours, she left those windows open and took a break from October 12 to investigate October 11th.

More stocks, more bonds - finance was dead boring on every planet, apparently - more politicians talking and not saying anything. More storms, and an earthquake.

An earthquake considered quite unusual, in Eastern Europe.

An earthquake centered in Latveria. Late on the night of October 11th.

The article she’d found didn’t say much, so she opened another, more focused search. An earthquake measured at 6.8 magnitude had the capital city of Latveria at its epicenter… a phenomenon that had not happened in recorded history. While centered there, little was known of Latveria’s damage and recovery outside the country, as they had maintained their historical isolationism regarding sharing of information. Some buildings had sustained damage in neighboring countries, and 3 individuals had lost their lives. 

She looked at other articles. None had any information on how Latverian people and buildings fared. There was frequent curiosity as to what could have caused the earthquake, as no model of current tectonics theory explained it. It appeared to follow none of the understood parameters for predicting quakes. There was some concern that Latveria could have been testing nuclear weapons within its borders. However, there had been no readings of radioactivity to corroborate such an idea, and apparently the man in charge there – with the improbable name of Victor Von Doom - wasn’t considered quite evil enough to try that particular nasty trick on his own people.

Earthquake. Ellie pondered. 

Even if there were actually something to that, she had no allies now, and no access to anyone who could help figure this out.

She had no way to get there.

Could she trust this Steve and Sharon? Would they help? Did they know Ian was gone? Did they have anything to do with it?

Could they have been taken too?

Didn’t Ian’s argument with his parents involve Latveria? Why were they invading other countries when they had a crisis back home?

Natural disasters, Sam’s input… she had too much information and not near enough, all at once. Her head spun – lost in encroaching despair. 

She brought her focus back around to needing to do something.

Ellie thought,  _ what would my parents do?  _

Her dad would probably head immediately to Latveria, and engage in a series of choices that would probably end up with him punching this Doom character. Not Ellie’s best choice, considering her resources at hand.

Her mom would… really, when she thought about it all - the quake, the changes, Sam’s observations - she had to admit…

Her mom would confront Bucky Barnes. He was the one Ellie knew the least, and yet he was the epicenter of Sam’s concerns. That combination was enough to warrant a talk.

The thought of finding one strange man on this planet had, at first, terrified her just as much as the idea of walking up to him and saying “Hey, your friend thinks you’re creepy. Wanna tell me about this earthquake?”

Lucky for her, this strange man turned out to be the current Secretary of Defense for the U.S.

There were apparently some high level meetings going on, and several news outlets gave her some idea of where his current whereabouts were.

She found a photo of him. With his close cropped dark hair and tasteful business suit, he looked almost like he could be one of those male fashion models she’d seen, looking vacant and slightly menacing and trying to sell her cologne in a magazine.

He fought with Steve during World War II, she gathered, and he had some sort of illustrious Army career until he retired from active duty, and eventually took this job. At some point he took a serum that stopped his aging, among other things. He’d also married once and divorced, no children. His ex-wife was frequently mentioned in passing in articles about other things, but Ellie couldn’t seem to find many more details about the woman, other than she was Russian.

“Secretary Barnes will begin his trip in New York City,” one article read, “with visits to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations.”

The article mentioned a couple of public events Barnes would attend, starting today, for the next two days.

Ellie thought about his agenda, and her own travel. She could probably catch up with him by the end of the day.


	6. The Secretary of Defense

Through sheer force of will, Ellie pushed through her terrible sense of direction and successfully navigated strange maps of a strange city, to get herself to where Bucky was. Along the way, she lifted a woman’s blazer and a business-like scarf. After a trip to the venue lobby ladies’ room, she was smartened up to a presentable state, with her hair in a low bun.

She still had no idea what she’d say to the man. But she had a second row aisle seat for an afternoon press conference involving Barnes and a handful of other bigwigs she didn’t know.

The panel of men soon arrived, stood at various important looking podiums, and started making inane statements and taking boring questions. Most of the statements and questions were about an international consortium… or committee… or some word that had already slipped from Ellie’s attention as she wracked her brain for ideas to accomplish her goal. There was more cooperation about something that involved a lot of buzzwords and the whole thing really reminded her very thoroughly of how fatigued she was.

If she hadn’t made her mind up looking at his picture, she made it watching him speak in person. Upon seeing this Bucky Barnes, she immediately and profoundly distrusted him. He had the air of a man who was used to people trusting him, who had crafted his charm over the years and expected it to get him far. He also had a heavy, callous kind of power that sat coldly behind that precariously perched charm. She never wanted to be present when he decided the charming act could be dropped. She reflexively never ever wanted to be alone in a room with him, though she suspected she would soon need to be.

When the public statements and questions about cooperation and synergy were done, Barnes waved and smiled and headed to the door she hoped he’d use, past her part of the audience.

She had selected her spot not just for the route he’d take, but also because there was an elementary school class directly in front of her. 

He saw them, in fact, and came to have a few quick pictures taken with them.

Ellie inched her way around the kids, and put on her best quietly efficient, adult-in-charge-of-children face. Sharp-eyed, slightly tense jaw, unflappable demeanor. She stepped in close enough that outsiders might think she was a chaperone, but on the periphery enough that for ten to fifteen seconds, she wouldn’t look suspicious to the teachers.

For good measure, she briefly laid a hand near the back of one young child in a shepherding fashion, when the other instructors weren’t looking.

And it worked. Barnes worked his way around, clearly focusing on the younger and more conventionally attractive of the instructors, and he was soon next to her, shaking her hand.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said to her in an oily voice.

“Mr. Secretary, it is an honor and a pleasure to meet you in person.” Ellie knew how little time she had to pique his interest. She flashed her best smile, and he paused.

“Have we met before?” Barnes asked her, searching her face and clearly finding familiarity.

“No, no this is our first...” She decided to pour her anxiety into a show of being flustered. She needed him alone. She pressed a palm to her cheek. “I just know I’m blushing, I’m so sorry.”

His smile turned into a chuckle. She thought she might have his attention.

“I read the piece Vanity Fair did on you,” she continued, “and I...”

She stopped, wide-eyed. His mouth opened in eagerness, and his eyebrows crept up his forehead in anticipation of her finishing her sentence.

She chanced a look at the school group, who was breaking away from her and leaving. Good, perfect timing.

“Mr. Secretary,” she leaned in with a shy but conspiratorial air. She could feel her nervous breath lifting and lowering her chest. “If I could have just a few, private minutes with you. I’m a big fan.”

He flashed the sort of satisfied smile that most other men wouldn’t even notice was unfriendly, but that she never wanted to see again.

He put a hand on her back.

“Step right this way with me, sweetheart,” Bucky said. “Let’s discuss this important matter privately.”

They left the press hall, and traveled amidst a cloud of men in dark suits, all headed down a hall toward an elevator. He kept a hand on her elbow and barked a few orders at them as they walked.

“Are you sure we haven’t met?” he asked Ellie again.

They’d reached the elevator, where someone had already called a car and held it open for Barnes. The crowd of men peeled off -- all but two. The last two began to board the elevator car with Ellie and Barnes, when he waved them off.

“Take the stairs,” he quietly snarled. 

The door closed with Ellie and Bucky alone in the elevator.

He turned to Ellie and smiled.

“So, your name is…?”

She took a big breath.

“Eleanor. Rogers.”

“Eleanor...” His demeanor immediately shifted into suspicion, and then recognition.

He put his hands on his hips and sighed.

“Eleanor Rogers. Practically my niece. From… from some other...”

“Dimension. It’s complicated. Look.” She dropped all pretense now, as she watched him run his smooth, meticulously manicured hands down his face in annoyance. There was nothing for Ellie to do now but swing for the fence and hope she caught a hit.

“Look, we both know there’s something going on,” she said. “It’s affecting Steve and Sharon, it’s affecting Sam, and my friend Ian. Ian’s… he’s the only friend I’ve got. I mean, he’s kind of my brother, right?”

“What’s the point here, Rogers?”

“Ellie, my friends call me Ellie.”

“Ellie,” Bucky said. “I’ve got nothing for you.” He turned away from her, a hand in one pocket, and eyed the door of the lift with a creased brow. 

He had checked out. She’d lost him.

“… what am I supposed to call you anyway?” she asked.

He shrugged in a mild way that indicated that he could not possibly care less what came out of her mouth. He was thoroughly and benignly bored with her.

“Bucky, Bucky is fine,” he said dully.

“Bucky,” Ellie said. “What happened in Latveria on October 11 th ?”

The temperature in the elevator seemed to drop ten degrees at the question, but the change across his whole affect was remarkably subtle. He stared coldly and rigidly at the door, the mild smile still on his face.

Her good luck with timing had run out. They reached the garage and the doors opened. Two different men greeted them.

She was sure that she wouldn’t get anything from him now.

But he stared coolly at the two men, then hit the “close door” button.

They were alone in the elevator again, with the car still and unmoving.

Bucky stared at the floor for a few more seconds, and Ellie’s determination to push past the terrible intimidation factors of gross powerful men began to waver as they stood in silence.

Finally, he took a sudden step into her personal space and spoke quickly and quietly.

“You know nothing about Latveria. If you had any sense in you, you’d keep your head down and disappear. You think you carry any weight in this world? You don’t. You’re nothing. You have no one here. You would be forgotten, in the blink of an eye.”

With that, Ellie got mad. She wouldn’t flinch. She wouldn’t show weakness. He wouldn’t get that satisfaction.

“You want to survive this world?” he continued. “You think it’s any easier to avoid the monsters here than it was where you came from? It isn’t. This place is full of people who will do to you what got done to your parents.”

In an instant he’d pressed the button to open the door. So they were no longer alone, and she was very much outnumbered. She had a surge of panic as the security men loomed at the elevator door.

But Bucky stepped out of the lift with a brisk, business-like walk, and they all followed behind him.

He spared her one pseudo-sympathetic glance, and a warning.

“Do be careful,” he said with a hollow smile. Then he turned away again, as though she never existed.

Ellie crept, unblinking, out of the lift and stood rigid near the doors. She watched them secret him away into a vehicle, watched them pile in efficiently after him, watched the cars drive away out of the parking garage, far away from her.

Then she slowly let go of the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

_ THAT was Steve Rogers’ best friend? _

  
  
  


Ellie wrapped her hands around a dark roast with extra shots, escaping the rain in a nearby coffee shop, and tried to collect her thoughts. She asked herself what she knew.

She knew this was Ian’s home world. She knew something happened nearly three weeks ago that shifted the fabric of this world, somehow. Not everyone noticed. But in some ways, some differences became quite obvious to certain individuals.

Did that mean the differences were localized? Or – she thought more likely – the amnesia surrounding the “original” reality was stronger for some. Ian hadn’t been here. He’s the one that’s been surest that something was different. Sam had an inkling… and she suspected he was a man with certain heightened skills and a strong sense of right and wrong.

Steve should know. Sharon should know. They should know something’s different. That just felt, to Ellie, like the way it should be. She searched herself about that, and wondered if she were just idealizing them. She was good at that; it made it easier, historically, to find fault in herself. But in this case, she didn’t think she was snowing herself. Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter, they should be solid and sure and grounded. That’s just who they are.

If they’re not noticing it… is someone trying to KEEP them from noticing?

Maybe they’re at the epicenter of this, and they don’t know.

Maybe they’re the ones who most need her help right now.

With that thought, Ellie slammed back the dregs of her coffee and made plans to get back to Steve and Sharon’s house. 

  
  
  


Hours later, the bus dropped her in the town nearest their home. She thought ruefully of the walk it would no doubt take to get there as she leaned against the nearest building wall, and braced herself.

“You look tired,” a voice said out of nowhere. “And in need of an ally.”

Ellie didn’t have the chance to look the woman over until after she had spoken – a rare occurrence for Ellie, that someone could sneak up on her. The stranger stood firmly… not quite a military stance, but Ellie had little doubt that she was a fighter. She wore her hair in a blond bob, and wore black slacks and a modestly fashionable black sweater under a black overcoat. She was strikingly beautiful, and had an elegant grace about her.

Ellie suddenly realized how cold she was. She’d dropped her fancy coat somewhere.

“Can I buy you a coffee before you get on your way?” the woman said. “There’s a good shop just down the street.”

Ellie hesitated, absorbing the offer silently. The woman’s voice sounded ridiculously kind and appealing to Ellie. She fought the desire to trust the stranger immediately. 

“I apologize, I must sound terribly forward,” the woman continued, “but to be completely honest, you remind me very much of the daughter of a friend of mine. And travelling alone is always a bit challenging for us girls, isn’t it? Safety in numbers and all that.”

Ellie tried to follow her gut. She thought she woman might be trustworthy. But if she were honest with herself, she was way past overwhelmed and frightened. Maybe she was grasping for straws, and maybe she wasn’t. 

For better or for worse, Ellie decide to trust her a while. 

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

The woman smiled sweetly, and nodded.

“Come this way,” she said.

They turned away from where Ellie thought the nearest coffee shop might be, but she decided not to mention that. The woman walked slowly, allowing Ellie to walk beside her both with minimal limp and with minimal pain.

“Unseasonably cold, isn’t it?” the woman said in a tone reserved for small talk.

“I wouldn’t know, I’m not from around here,” Ellie responded.

“Oh no?” The woman said in mild surprise. “Oh, well, me neither. It’s so easy to just get blown around all over the place, isn’t it?”

They walked a while in silence, and approached a different coffee shop -  a small place sandwiched in between two other businesses in an old building.

“Easy to get knocked around from one place to another,” the woman said with an absent-minded tone, as she stepped toward the door.

Her tone got subtly quieter, and more instructional.

“Follow me,” she said.

They walked through a long, narrow shop. The woman greeted the person behind the counter with a warm, knowing nod, and she strode with authority toward the back of the business.

Once behind the “employees only” sign, and out of sight of anyone else but Ellie, the woman threw her blond bob off to show short-cropped red hair.

‘Here,” she said, as she picked up a large, white plastic bag and handed it to Ellie in one motion.

Ellie investigated, and the bag held a new coat and scarf.

“How did you-” Ellie began to ask.

“I’ll explain in the car,” the woman said.

They paused at the back door, while Ellie threw on the coat and scarf. She quickly felt much warmer.

Soon, they were in a dark alley, where a surprisingly ostentatious silver convertible greeted them.

Ellie was stunned into a frozen state.

“This is… our… covert...” She couldn’t manage any more words, and only looked at the woman, puzzled.

“She’s got hidden talents,” the stranger said. “Come on.”

They both swung into a seat and the woman revved the engine.

“Buckle in!” The woman demanded.

Ellie moved to get her seat belt on. As soon as it was in place, the car began vibrating in an unexpected way. Ellie didn’t expect the woman to have a car this badly in need of having its engine looked at.

Just as the thought finished forming in Ellie’s head, the car shuddered almost imperceptibly. Then she watched the walls of the buildings on either side begin to disappear beneath them, until she was looking down onto a roof.

The car had lifted itself straight up off the ground, and was now flying them out of town. The woman driving pressed a button, and the top of the convertible crept out from behind the back seat and closed them in.

“This is… this is definitely the most unusual hitchhiking experience I’ve had,” Ellie managed.

“I’ll buy that,” the woman said. “Okay, first of all, my name is Natasha Romanoff.” She extended a hand, and Ellie shook it. “I’m really hoping yours is Eleanor.”

“Luckily, it is,” Ellie said. The name was familiar for some reason, but she couldn’t place it.

“Good, we’re good so far then!” She smiled. “I’m an old friend of Steve and Sharon’s.”

“I… I was headed to their house.”

“Yeah, I figured. Look just as friendly advice, I don’t think that’s the best place for you right now. Whatever’s got hold of them, they’re pretty stuck in some uncharacteristic behavior. And I don’t think conversation will help.”

Ellie still hadn’t figured out what her strategy should be here.

“Why do you say that?” Ellie asked warily.

“Why don’t you tell me what you know,” Natasha instructed.

Ellie took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“No,” she replied.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “No?” she asked Ellie.

“Look, if you have to turn this car right around, or whatever, then fucking do it. At this point, I don’t care. But I just met you. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who you’re working with. I’m in your flying car. The strangers who look exactly like my lost loved ones are apparently not even acting appropriately, the way strangers who look like my parents should act, whatever the hell that might be. The one individual on this planet that I’ve spent more than 72 hours with… and it honestly wasn’t even all that much longer than that… has disappeared without a trace. I don’t want to talk about what I know. I want to know why you’ve taken upon yourself to either kidnap or rescue me, I don’t even know which yet.”

Natasha drove silently, with what now looked vaguely like a look of approval on her face.

“Okay. Here’s what I know,” she said. “A few weeks back, a set of scientists – a couple of whom we’ve identified – were present in a lab in Eastern Europe when an experiment led to shock waves that measured as a significant earthquake. Since then, there have been some… incomplete indications... that there was a timeline breach.”

“A timeline breach?” Ellie repeated, confused and stunned. When she and Ian discussed the possibility, it felt so distant and surreal. And now this very savvy-looking kidnapping/rescuing stranger was echoing this wild idea they’d had.

Natasha continued. “I work with an organization that has some experience measuring the impact of time travel.”

Ellie stared. Her brain had valiantly kept up so far with this whole absurd series of circumstances, until this moment. And now it had stalled.

“Whatever caused the earthquake,” Natasha continued, “has had far reaching effects in some already unstable threads across the timeline.”

Ellie strained for understanding.

“Somebody went back in time? Or came back from… being in the past?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Natasha replied.

“More complicated than time travel.” Ellie nodded in despair, then held her head in her hands for a moment.

The car was quiet for a few minutes.

Eventually, Natasha spoke.

“Do you prefer I call you Eleanor, or Ellie?”

Ellie looked up at her, and was struck by the kindness of the question.

“Ellie,” she replied.

“Ellie,” Natasha said gently. “I don’t know what your favorite kinds of stories might be. But let’s imagine a wild piece of science fiction. Okay? Make a little leap into absurdity with me. Let’s talk about this.”

Ellie took a breath, and sat up straight in her seat.

“So,” Natasha said. “Your simplest, one-way time travel trip. It might be represented by just a simple little loop in a string, right?”

You mean,” Ellie said, “guy jumps in a capsule, heads back a few decades... and... stays there?”

“Exactly. One-way trip. Not even a knot. Just a little loop in the line.”

“Okay,” Ellie reasoned. “I can see that. And the next step up in complexity would be… guy goes back, changes a thing, heads back to his own time. And his time would be different, somehow, because he changed something. I… I don’t know how that would look on a string.”

“That’s more difficult to visualize, isn’t it?” 

“For that...” Ellie nearly interrupted with her idea. “For that, once the string doubles back in on itself, it… it changes color maybe? Changes somehow, in some fundamental way. At the point of contact.”

“You’re getting the idea.”

“You’re saying though… whatever’s happened here, this one is more complicated than either of those.”

“That is what I’m saying. That’s what we suspect.” Natasha looked to be choosing her words. “Imagine adding another element to our string metaphor. Imagine the time traveller being physically tethered to his original time. Not just symbolically, but in a very real, physical way.”

“He’s got... another string tying him to his own original time period,” Ellie offered.

“Yes, good. Now imagine him not just visiting one point in the past, but being thrown around the timeline, all around his lifetime, with a startling number of bounces. With that second line attached.”

“That’s… that’s a knot,” Ellie said.

“Yep.”

“A big knot.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ellie considered. Ian was thrown out of his own dimension. But he still knew this one enough to know something was different. Sam knew that too, he knew something. Bucky’s… just weird. None of them felt like the focal point.

“Steve,” Ellie said. “Steve got tied in a time knot. Changing… who knows what.”

She looked to Natasha, who nodded.

“So...” Ellie found more energy in her to reach for a grasp on this. “So, was he in Latveria on October 11 th ?”

Natasha’s eyebrows lifted and she looked at Ellie.

“The earthquake,” Ellie continued. “It was… him leaving? Or coming back?” 

“I’m impressed. But no, Steve’s leaping around happened a few years back. And he hasn’t been to Latveria in ages.”

“So what was the earthquake?”

“The earthquake was somebody finally tightening that old knot they tied years ago.”

Ellie’s head spun, but she thought she might have it, if she kept reaching.

“Whoever sent Steve yo-yoing,” Ellie said. “They waited until now… to solidify the changes.”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “But now they’ve got to seal the deal. If this many of us know enough to realize there’s been a change, it can’t be complete. They’ve got to tie loose ends.”

“They’ve got to glue it all together the way it is. Permanently.”

Natasha nodded at her. “Steve and Sharon both were involved - they were both required - to make the time travel happen last time. The link between them was critical to the task. The bond between them was the second string that made the knot.”

“Do you think they’d be needed for this part?” Ellie asked.

“I’m pretty sure of it, yeah.”

“I know Bucky’s got them snowed, but it’s hard to imagine them going along with that.”

“Yeah, that’s the part I haven’t figured out yet,” Natasha said.

  
  
  


Ellie supposed it was a testament to how much she trusted Natasha that she fell asleep - somewhere just out of town, best she could tell – and woke up with them well outside civilization. The foliage and vegetation was still relatively similar. While Ellie couldn’t tell, she didn’t think it had been more than a couple of hours.

It might have been a gear shift in the car that woke her up, because almost immediately they were gently losing speed and altitude, coasting down near an outcropping of rock.

As they came closer, Natasha pushed a button, and lights appeared on the side of the rock hill. Soon, an invisible door opened, and they were landing in a small but sophisticated hangar.

“Wait, you didn’t drug me did you?” Ellie asked.

“I did not,” Natasha said.

Ellie eyed her, suspicious of her for the first time since meeting her. Ellie was keenly aware that she had no idea where she was right now.

Natasha stared back, gently but firmly.

“The next thing to learn about me is that when and if I drug you, I will tell you to your face. After the fact, at the very least.”

Ellie looked her up and down.

“Okay,” Ellie conceded tartly.

“Ellie! Are you okay?”

A frantic and familiar voice rang out across the hangar, and soon Sharon was approaching the car.

“Why didn’t you stay with Ian?” Sharon’s pleaded voice had an edge of scolding to it.

“With Ian? Didn’t Ian get taken?” Ellie exclaimed.

“Well yes, but he’s okay,” Sharon replied.

Ellie recoiled in horror. What the hell was going on?

Natasha sounded annoyed. “Are you kidding me, Sharon?”

Ellie’s flight mode activated, and she scrabbled to get out of the car.

“Ellie, it’s not like that,” Sharon explained.

“Let me out!” Ellie screamed. She shoved Sharon away. Even though the older woman successfully grabbed her wrist, Ellie knew enough grappling to twist and break her hold. Then she made a beeline for the big entrance door of the hangar, still closing.

She was nearly there. She was so tired, and her foot was throbbing, and she hadn’t a clue where she was, nor how much walking she’d have to do. But she had to get out. She couldn’t be trapped here.

Sharon was involved in Ian’s abduction. It was too much to bear.

_ Just get past the hangar doors, just a few more yards _ . Ellie just had to keep moving as fast as she could.

With ten feet left to her escape, there was a brief, deafening sound. And the doors froze where they were, the gap holding steady in front of her.

Ellie stopped and stared at it. Then she looked over her shoulder. Natasha was standing a few feet away, having hit the emergency stop.

“Your extra-dimensional mother figure here is an idiot,” Natasha said. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll get any better answers out there.” She nodded to outside.

Ellie looked at the woman, Natasha... and silently pleaded with her to be someone safe. Someone she could trust. Ellie wasn’t used to having much trust in people around her. But she desperately needed more than she had.

Natasha stepped closer as she spoke. “You have my word you can leave this place any time you like. I’ll help you pack with supplies if you choose to go. Just give us a chance, okay?”

“Why?” Ellie confronted her quietly. “Why do you want me here?” Ellie said.

“Because you have unique skills and experiences,” Natasha said. “You’re bright and resourceful. And I’m pretty sure we’ll need your help to save the world.”

Ellie worked hard not to say yes just because she was tired, just because this was the least exhausting, least terrifying option. Her dad and mom wouldn’t want that. They would expect more.  _ Stay when it’s right, Ellie. _

But Ellie also had a hunch that it was the right thing to do.

She realized then that Natasha had Ellie’s bag in her hand. Ellie took her things and walked back toward the bunker beyond the hangar. Sharon still stood next to the car, gawking at Ellie.

Ellie stopped next to her.

“Ian and Sam deserved better than being rounded up like criminals,” she told Sharon.

“It was protective custody, Ellie,” Sharon explained.

“Call it whatever you want. It’s still wrong,” Ellie said defiantly.

Sharon clearly bit her tongue. She stepped aside, and in a stiffly conciliatory gesture, she raised an arm toward a door further into the bunker.

Ellie walked into the corridor, and found Sharon and Natasha joining her.

“How long have you been here?” Natasha asked.

“Not long,” Sharon said. “I brought Tony the gun.”

“THE gun?” Natasha sounded astonished.

“Well, Tony’s the only one I know of with the skill to dispose of it properly.”

“Dispose of… Sharon, we can’t dispose of-”

The two women continued arguing behind Ellie as she walked down a side hall of the bunker, becoming their de facto navigator by happenstance. But the rooms to either side of them were dark, and the hallway was deserted. At the far end of the hall was a closed door with light shining through the crack underneath and muffled talking emanating from it. She assumed that’s where they were headed.

Ellie didn’t know what they were talking about behind her, and the confusion threatened to overwhelm her again. 

She remembered all those many times that the circumstances were strange and terrifying, but her parents kept her calm and soothed her as they rushed… rushed to hide, rushed to fight, rushed to escape. They kept going with whatever their task was, and still kept a calm presence in the space around her, making it feel safe to go wherever they were going.

They weren’t here, to be guides or allies. They wouldn’t ever be again. 

And at that understanding, something deep inside her shifted.

Ellie walked the remainder of the hallway with her head held high, knowing she was an equal to the others around her. No matter how many strangers she met, no matter who they looked or acted like, no matter how beat she was. It didn’t matter how many allies or guides she had or didn’t have. It didn’t matter what stood in the way. It didn’t matter how much older anyone else around her was. Nobody was going to get to her. She was a child of hope. She was her parents’ daughter, and that would show in what she chose to do. 

She fingered the ring she wore that her father gave her, and she opened the door and walked into a conference room, Nat and Sharon still in tow. Tony Stark was there, standing at a screen, examining video playback. The video was blurry, and badly framed, but appeared to show Bucky Barnes speaking with someone, while a third party watched unseen behind the hidden camera.

Upon hearing the first word uttered by Barnes’ conversation partner, Ellie crumpled into the nearest chair as stoically as she could. Her head remained unbowed, but Ellie involuntarily wept.

There was only one, terrible voice that sounded like that. Only one evil force that sound could belong to. Ellie had hoped to never hear his voice again.

Barnes was speaking to Arnim Zola.


	7. The Bunker

“So, Mr. Secretary has some accomplices,” Tony said.

Ellie heard a subtle but audible sigh behind her, as Natasha entered the conference room and saw the tape.

“Why, James?” she muttered.

Ellie finally realized why Natasha’s name sounded familiar. She’d seen it in articles about her former marriage to Barnes. 

As Nat sat down at the table, Ellie turned to examine her face unabashedly. She seemed an unsentimental woman, but her eyes still held kindness. Despite barely knowing her, it was near impossible for Ellie to imagine her with the smarmy man who threatened her in the elevator, or with the kind of man who would plot with Zola.

Ellie wondered just how deeply this tying and untying of the knot had changed Nat’s ex-husband.

“Who got the footage?” Sharon asked, as she sat down next to Ellie.

“Sitwell,” Tony said. “He was startled enough to share it with Steve.”

“Bucky’s key connections span every Western power, and more than one Asian military powerhouse,” Sharon explained. “We have to assume Zola’s now got allies in most countries around the world.”

“Even across Europe?” Ellie said, looking pointedly at Sharon.

“The potshots aren’t necessary,” Sharon retorted.

“It’s a fair question, Sharon,” Natasha offered.

“Of course I knew BUCKY had connections!” Sharon replied. “There’s nothing suspicious there, he’s the damned Secretary of Defense! I didn’t know about this! He kept this hidden, because he knew it would tip his hand.”

“Alright, blame game doesn’t get us anywhere,” Tony said. “We need a way to keep this from going any further.”

“Okay just to clarify, what is THIS, what do we need to stop?” Ellie said. “Your main defense guy is in Zola’s back pocket? I’m assuming Zola’s an evil scheming fascist in every dimension?”

“A fascist wannabe here,” Natasha said. “So far, anyway. I think that’s what we’re stopping. He has no direct political power, only allies in powerful positions. James is on the payroll, and Zola and Doom will see eye to eye. Who else?”

Tony and Sharon were silent a beat.

“Tell me about the gun,” Ellie said.

The three remained quiet another moment, and Ellie looked around. Natasha looked proud of her. Sharon avoided her eyes. Tony looked to Sharon, seemingly searching for words, but didn’t find any.

“Ellie, that bouncing around I told you about, that Steve did?” Natasha said.

“Tying the knot in the first place,” Ellie replied.

“Exactly,” said Natasha. “That was originally triggered by a weapon that was used on him.”

Tony joined in then. “He spent months pinballing around the timeline, with a tether to the person who shot him remaining in place.”

The way they spoke around Sharon got Ellie to thinking. Steve didn’t sign on for this. The people who masterminded and triggered this whole process weren’t Steve’s friends. The person who he was tethered to… who shot him… chances are, they didn’t sign up for this either.  

Ellie began to piece together what must have happened. Sharon provided the thread by shooting Steve, and not of her own free will.

Ellie saw that Sharon had been squeezing and worrying her fingers together in her lap, as the others had caught Ellie up on the gun. These events must have caused Sharon terrible pain. When Ellie felt the impulse to put her own hand on top of Sharon’s hands, she didn’t fight it.

Sharon responded to Ellie’s touch by slowing her anxious fidgeting to a standstill, and opening her hand under Ellie’s, winding their fingers together. She still didn’t meet her eyes.

“So what do we need to do with the gun now?” Ellie asked gently.

Tony, Natasha and Sharon all spoke at the same time.

“Destroy it,” Sharon said.

“Use it again to fix this,” Natasha said.

“I have no idea,” Tony said.

“Well, there’s nothing like a team being on the same page,” Ellie offered up with a sympathetic smile. She spun her head around to look at them all. She didn’t know where to begin unpacking the significance of the gun, but Tony’s answer caught her attention.

Ellie asked Tony, “Did you say you didn’t know what to do?”

“Yes,” he said defensively. “Why?”

Natasha interjected. “I have to believe a Stark admitting to a lack of omniscience breaks the rules of physics in any dimension.”

Ellie gave her statement a confirming nod.

“We destroy the gun, we end this,” Sharon said.

“A reset button tends to work better if it isn’t blown up,” Natasha said.

“I do tend to think we should do something with the gun to help reverse this,” Tony replied. “It’s got a physical connection to Steve and Sharon’s bond. I doubt simply destroying it will help. It’s not actively affecting the situation, near as I can tell.”

“The gun created the tether that sent him careening,” Sharon insisted. “Destroying the gun will break the tether, forever, permanently. That should reset all this,” Sharon insisted.

“We don’t know what the consequences will be to destroying it,” Tony said. “We may need to do something else with it. Or it may be entirely irrelevant. The earthquake set something else in motion. There’s further machinery fueling this that we’ve got to get our hands on. Hopefully, that’s the option that will solve this.”

“Why do you say ‘hopefully”?” Ellie asked. “What other options are there?”

“The other option is sending Steve careening back through time again, to fix whatever he broke the last time,” Tony said.

“Does he know what he did?” Natasha asked. “Do we even know how many acts it took to create this? How many changes he made?”

Sharon shook her head ruefully. “If he does, he never told me. He had nightmares for months after, but he didn’t mention many more details than that.”

“Where the hell is he?” Ellie wondered.

“He’s handling something, he’ll catch up with us soon,” Sharon said.

They sat in silence a moment. Ellie wished she had something more to offer that could help.

Sharon spoke again. “What else do we know about what’s different this time from the last? What’s changed since Steve got back years ago, anybody have any information at all?”

“Ian and Sam were working on that,” Ellie said. “Where is Ian?”

Sharon put a hand to her temple and sighed. “He escaped.”

“He…” Ellie took in her words. “He escaped. Protective custody.”

“Yes,” Sharon replied.

Ellie felt laughter bubble up inside her and let it peal through the room.

“Sam too?” Ellie giggled.

“No, as far as I know, Sam is still there,” said Sharon.

“Well, it’s past time to bust him out. Let’s talk to him, he’s been studying this.” Ellie responded.

“We don’t know where he’s being held,” Sharon whispered through a clenched jaw.

“... they captured them and then split them up?” Ellie said, anger rising. “And you don’t know where he is?”

She looked at Sharon, who said nothing and stared at the table. 

“He told me you were a friend of his,” Ellie said coolly to Sharon, who remained silent. “Well, how do we find him?”

“I’ve checked with people I trust at all the nearby bases,” Sharon sad. “They must have shuttled him further out.”

“I’ve got some folks looking,” Nat said.

“I’m doing some digging too,” Tony said. “We’ll find him soon.”

Ellie looked at them all.

“So,” Ellie said. “This part hasn’t been mentioned yet. But, uh…”

She turned to Sharon.

“Whose side are your bosses on?” Ellie asked. She turned to Natasha. “Or yours?”

“I’m mostly a free agent myself, at the moment,” Natasha offered.

Ellie looked back at Sharon, who stared off in the distance.

“We just wanted to protect people,” she whispered. “Keep people safe.”

“Safe from what? Exactly what’s happening?” Ellie asked.

Sharon was again obviously biting her tongue. Nat and Tony didn’t look interested in pushing Sharon on her being under some influence from all this, and Sharon herself looked pretty messy and miserable.

“Okay. Well. When do we head to Latveria?” Ellie asked.

“Slow the bus down,” Tony said. “Let me work out some of the science first. I’m still ascertaining whether it’s necessary to be there.” 

“Alright, then take me to see Steve,” Ellie said.

“Steve will catch up with us,” Sharon said with a slight edge. “Soon.”

Ellie was ready to take action, but it really looked like nobody else was.

“We don’t have to solve this now,” Natasha reasoned. “We’ve got time, Ellie. Time before they can even make their moves.”

“Yeah, this won’t go down today,” Tony said encouragingly. “Lets kick back, have some beers. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

“We’re safe here, too,” Sharon reassured Ellie without looking at her.

“When’s the last time you managed a hot shower, Rogers?” Natasha asked Ellie.

“And a hot meal,” Sharon said. “There’s not much here, but it’s not rations either.” 

Sharon caught Ellie’s gaze that time, and was clearly trying to keep a gentleness in her eyes, even after Ellie’s jabs. Sharon tried. Ellie supposed having a 17 year old kind-of-but-not-at-all-your-daughter thrust on you in the middle of your work crisis and mental manipulation was a lot for her to manage. Ellie worked to soften her own gaze too.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” Sharon said. “I’m going to find you fresh clothes. Then there will be food waiting when you’re done.”

  
  
  


Ellie found an unused room that she supposed was her quarters for now. It wasn’t bad… clean, sparse, and quiet. And private. She fixed the bedsheets the way her dad liked to do them, and she put her shoes neatly at the door to the bathroom, the way her mom would. 

Then it was her space.

She found basic supplies for showering, and cranked the hot water up. When the water started beating down on her, easing some tension away, she wondered momentarily if her new resolve would wash away too. 

Then she realized her resolve was one of the few things she had going for her. So she decided she wouldn’t give it up that easily.

Neither one of her parents were in the resistance by her age, she realized… but they were both on their own, without families to lean on. She hadn’t put that together before. Discovering that shared experience made her feel closer to them. 

She cleaned up, and looked through the bathroom drawers to see what other resources she had stumbled her way into. When she found a clean, dry brush and good sturdy hair ties - the kind that didn’t pull - she thought she might start crying, and felt quite silly about it. 

But, if her mother were here, she would pat her on the back. And her father would tell her it was always okay to cry, with a brief speech about it making us human. 

Everyone at the table tonight had insisted there was no rush. So Ellie hitched a hip up onto the counter, got comfy, and took time to carefully brush out all the tangles in her hair. She massaged her scalp as she smoothed out the untangled strands. Then she braided it, and secured it with ties.

Her preferred style of braid was one on each side of her head. She had been in this dimension long enough to know that such a style was looked upon as immature here just as much as it was back home. But she decided she didn’t care, and gave herself one braid behind one ear, then a second braid behind the other. Anyone who judged her for her hair was already going to write her off as too young. If she was going to accomplish this, she was going to do it on her terms, and not anybody else’s. 

She exited the bathroom to find her room mostly untouched, except for the addition of a pile of clean clothes… including a bra of the proper size. The black shirt and blue jeans were plain and simple, but clean and fit well.  

She dressed, and followed her nose to the kitchen area. Sharon was frowning thoughtfully at several items on the stove, wielding a spatula as she worked. 

When she noticed Ellie, she asked her a question. 

“How do you feel about grilled cheese sandwiches?” 

“I feel positively,” Ellie replied, as she climbed up on a stool at a gleaming silver bar close by, “about almost anything with cheese in it.”

“Excellent,” Sharon said.“There’s two kinds of soup as well.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Ellie smiled.

Ellie watched the woman - simultaneously familiar and so strange and foreign - bent over the bubbling pots and sizzling pan. And Ellie suddenly realized very keenly how much she was bringing to the space in between them that had nothing to do with this Sharon. This woman who did not raise her. 

Ellie would never get to tell her own mother all manner of things that she wanted so badly to say. She only just noticed how much she needed to say them. Statements about love and pain and jealousy and intimidation and joy and pride. And strength. And gratitude. Ellie thought she’d drown in all the things she needed to tell her own mother.

But almost as strongly, she didn’t want to be the reason why a friendship couldn’t take root between herself and this woman, who was so different, with a whole different life… but who was just as proud and determined and strong as the woman Ellie had known. And who could use some help right now.

It was a unique bond they had. Ellie wondered if she had anything to offer to make Sharon more comfortable with her.

Sharon reached for items in a cabinet, then carried them back to the stove. She plated up sandwiches, and poured soup, and put it all on a giant tray that she brought to Ellie.

“Here we are,” Sharon said with pride. “Sandwiches for both of us! And soups to choose from. Would you prefer the tomato, or the spicy black bean?” 

“I’d like the black bean soup, please,” Ellie said.

“Good,” Sharon said conspiratorially. “Because I wanted the tomato.”

She rearranged the bowls, gathered Ellie’s silverware off the tray and handed her the bundle.

Ellie smiled and took them. They settled in at the bar and began to eat.

“The others aren’t joining us?” Ellie asked.

Sharon mumbled a negative sound through a mouthful of grilled cheese. Eventually she offered, “Natasha said she wasn’t hungry. And I think Tony is drinking his supper these days.”

“Some things are the same everywhere, I guess.”

Sharon looked at her thoughtfully.

“Were you close to your Tony?” she asked.

Ellie took her time chewing, and waited until she was done to answer. 

“My Tony had a complicated relationship with… everybody.” Ellie stopped eating to pick at her crusts absentmindedly. “We were close when I was young. It was his idea to build a pin system for my foot, and he designed it. I think… I think it made him feel really good, to be able to do that.”

“Something change?” Sharon said.

Ellie nodded. “When I got older, I dunno. We drifted apart.”

“Some men don’t know how to make that transition, when a girl child grows up,” Sharon said. “Wouldn’t surprise me to see a Tony Stark manage that badly.”

Ellie looked up at her. “You know, I think I assumed it was me.” Ellie checked her newfound insight against her memories. “Like I had done something wrong. I’m not sure I even realized I’d done that.”

Sharon looked sympathetic.

“Anyway,” Ellie said, then the took another bite of sandwich. “We had a fight, not long before…”

She trailed off.

“Before the end?” Sharon offered.

Ellie nodded, and swallowed a spoonful of soup.

“Ellie, I’m certain your loved ones - all of them - knew in their heart exactly how important they were to you.”

It felt good to hear her say that, Ellie realized. Ellie wanted the chance to tell them. But they also probably knew.

Ellie nodded into her soup again.

Then a thought occurred to her.

“Do I remind you of anyone?” she asked Sharon.

“Oh God, yes,” Sharon said. “Steve’s mother. I don’t suppose you knew your grandmother?”

Ellie heart skipped a beat. She knew her dad’s mom was really important to him, but he was often tight-lipped about her.

She shook her head, in response to Sharon’s question.

“She died when dad was young,” Ellie said.

“Well, I certainly never met her,” Sharon said. “But Steve has two pictures of her. And there is a strong, obvious resemblance in each. You’ve got her eyes, and her cheekbones.”

Ellie found a tremendous reassurance that she had such a connection.

“I’d like to see those pictures some time,” Ellie said.

“I am 100% certain we could convince Steve to show them to you,” Sharon said with a smile.

Ellie returned her smile. Then she suddenly found herself ravenous, and scarfed down the rest of her sandwich. She picked up her soup bowl to drink the dregs when Sharon next spoke.

“You precious girl, you must be starving. Here, there’s another sandwich, and more soup. Fill up.”

Ellie gratefully took the food. And then before she knew it, Sharon had ushered her up to bed again to get some sleep.

  
  


 

For the first time since the end, Ellie had vivid dreams.

She was in Tony’s lab, back home - her Tony, his lab. She was surrounded by her shiny toys -- the metal and glass sculptures she’d make of rejected scraps Tony would give her. She’d spent her whole life building them to be pretty, to be useless, to deliberately have no purpose in their grueling, stripped-down utilitarian life. In the dream, they far outnumbered how many she’d made in real life. They towered around her on mile-high shelves in every direction. She took one look - in her dream - and lashed out. She brought it all crashing down on herself and on Tony, every last one destroyed.

Then she was in front of a mirror with her mother. Her mom had given Ellie a list of rules, encased in glass, and only visible in the mirror, and she admonished Ellie that she must always follow them. Most rules involved using a piece of a children’s board game to solve an unsolvable puzzle… then suddenly each rule required a weapon from the weapons vault, mastered well, to complete.

She and Ian were on a cliff, and below them swirled galaxies and stars… more than she’d ever seen before. She tipped into them and lost her footing.

When she fell, she fell into her dad’s arms. One of his arms turned into Barnes’ - her Barnes’ - terrifying black cybernetic arm. The arm rose above her, seemingly ready to crush her.

Then she woke up with a start... determined to speak to Steve immediately.

  
  


 

She got up to limp around, and the tiny compound was so dark and still.

She found what she thought was Natasha’s room, and knocked.

After a moment, the crack below the door lit with a soft glow, and the door opened to reveal Natasha. If she been awakened by Ellie’s knock, she betrayed no sign of it. 

“Terrible things happened to our Bucky Barnes,” Ellie said, as soon as the door was open.

“What?” Natasha murmured.

“Terrible things. If my father had a chance to go back in time, to fix something… I think he’d try to fix that.”

Natasha stared at her. “What happened?”

Ellie shook her head. “He’s a different man, the details don’t matter. But look…”

Ellie reached hard for words, gripping the doorjamb, while Natasha simply stood and stared, a bit flummoxed by the whole conversation.

“I only barely met the man myself,” Ellie said. “He was… evil. By then. He was still Hydra. Still is, I guess. He’s probably still alive. But on the rare times Dad talked about him… I think they must have been like brothers. Whatever happened to Bucky was the… was the worst regret of Dad’s life. And even years later, even as removed as I was… I know that...”

“Your dad would try to rescue him,” Natasha finished the thought. “Given the chance.”

Ellie nodded.

“You think that’s what Steve did, that threw off this timeline?” Nat asked.

“What’s this Barnes’ life been like?” Ellie asked warily.

Natasha pursed her lips, then loosened them again. 

“Not terrible,” she said. “Rather ordinary, except for its length. Typical soldier turned politician, really.”

“Natasha, where’s Steve?” Ellie asked.

Natasha stood silently for a moment.

“He had some people to speak to,” she said. “Some favors to call in.”

“To stop whatever agreements Barnes has set up?” Ellie asked hopefully. “To do something about the invasions going on, the way Ian asked him to?”

Natasha lifted a hand to lean it against the doorframe, and then press her cheek to it. 

“Ellie, it’s complicated. They really are trying to protect-”

“Don’t,” Ellie said. “Natasha, do you really believe in that?”

Natasha looked off in the distance behind Ellie.

“Call me Nat,” she said.

“Nat. Where’s Steve?”

Nat met her eyes.

“You remind me a lot of myself,” Nat said.

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Ellie challenged.

“You’re right, it’s not,” she said. “Pack a bag. Meet me in the hangar. I’ll answer your question.”

Ellie felt hot as she spun around and strode away.

“Ellie.” Nat said it quietly, but it reverberated in the space between them.

Ellie turned back around.

“Stop by the armory,” Nat said. “Second door down the west hall. Get whatever you want.”


	8. The Lobbyist

As Ellie examined the bunker armory for her weaponry options, it hit her that her father’s shield would play no part in this fight, nor any others she’d fight. 

Ellie felt her heart break a bit, and wished she could hold the shield in her hands one more time. She’d grown up with it -- the weight, shape and sheer presence being so deeply familiar to her all her life. It was nearly another family member she had lost. 

She felt she understood better what it stood for, what sacrifices her father made walking away from all he knew as Captain Hydra. She never minimized what each of her parents had sacrificed to run the Resistance. But now, she thought, she realized just how deep the sacrifices cut. Being unmoored, choosing your battle strategy without guidance, making decisions not just for yourself but for others… she marveled at finding new skills in each of them, even from this great distance.

Ellie returned her attention to her task, and found weapons she’d immediately carry on her person: a sensible fixed blade neck knife, and a small pistol and thigh holster for it. 

She looked around the well-stocked armory that she stood in, unobserved, and decided there was room in her meager bag for one more thing. She nabbed a ridiculously beautiful set of tactical knives - machete, throwing knives and stiletto pocket knife - and hid the bulky package in her bag.  

With weapons gathered, Ellie left to find Nat.

  
  
  


A couple hours later, Ellie found herself casually spilling all manner of details of her old life to Natasha - who she suspected was no stranger to having people spill more secrets of their lives than they intended. Ellie had shared some of her most embarrassing weapons mishaps, her preferred adult beverages so far, and the finer points of sneaking out to underground dance clubs when your parents and additional guardians are all professional soldiers and spies.

“I dunno,” Ellie mused, “by the time I turned 13, it felt like every new male recruit under the age of 30 started sniffing around trying to get with me. It was gross.”

“Men are the same here too,” Natasha warned.

“I guess they felt like our whole family was public property,” Ellie mused. “They could just pick out what they wanted and try and take it.”

“I don’t know the lay of the land where you’re from, but here, men will feel entitled to you just because you’re a woman.”

“Seriously?” Ellie asked incredulously.

“Oh, it’s a major problem,” Natasha explained. “Keep one eye on them at all times.”

“Okay, I’ve explained gunpowder burns down my cleavage,” Ellie decreed, “you owe me a vulnerable moment.”

“Oh, is that the game? I missed the rules.”

“That is, in fact, the game.”

“Oh, well. Fair enough. Let’s see.”

Nat got distracted and stopped for a suspiciously timed double check of their navigation, and then looked at Ellie again.

Ellie looked at her with mock disapproval, and Nat was polite enough to look sheepish.

“Okay, uuuhm… I once dated a guy purely for his collection of disco records.”

Ellie evaluated her statement. “Quite amusing, but not vulnerable.”

“Don’t you want to know what disco is?” Nat asked.

“Later. It’ll take more than that to distract me.”

“Jeez, okay,” Nat said. “I… it took me embarrassingly long to learn how to use a sniper rifle.”

Ellie stared at her. 

“Gunpowder. Cleavage burns,” Ellie said.

“Dammit.” Natasha took in a breath and exhaled it forever. “I once... had a panic attack… because I burned a turkey.” 

Ellie’s eyes got wide. Was Nat admitting to a domestic mistake?

“Whose turkey?” Ellie asked.

“Ours,” Nat said quietly. “Mine. It was… my first Christmas with James. And… I was going to fix us a big traditional dinner. Which, uh, I had never done before. And the turkey just kept on not being done. Until finally, I don’t know how I missed the window. But it was burnt.”

Natasha was quiet a moment, and Ellie followed her cue.

“You might not guess it by looking,” Nat continued, “but… I’m not used to doing things unskillfully.”

Ellie smiled at her.

“James and I were just starting off and everything was exciting and made of potential, and I just thought I’d figure it out as I went. Only it didn’t work.”

Ellie thought she was seeing the woman’s tough exterior soften a bit.

“I panicked. James was forgiving enough. He didn’t understand at all why I’d gotten upset.”

“I understand why,” Ellie nodded.

Natasha looked at her, and Ellie could see a light in her eye. Then the softness winked away.

“Find us a radio station we can dance to,” Nat said.

Ellie, who had mastered the radio controls only shortly before, rolled around the dial until she found something they agreed on.

Ellie chanced some long glimpses at Natasha as she drove, absolutely certain Nat knew exactly how long Ellie looked at her, and probably half of what crossed her mind while she did. Not that Nat lorded any knowledge or control over her. She just… seemed to really know what was up. About almost anything.

“I didn’t have a Natasha back home,” Ellie said.

“That feel strange?” Natasha asked.

“Only in that it’s the least strange ongoing interaction I’ve had with literally anyone on this planet.”

Natasha smiled. “That does sound complicated. I wonder why our paths didn’t cross before.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were going to, eventually.”

Ellie was glad they had met now. But she wasn’t ready to share that.

  
  
  


Nat got them to a city block in Washington, DC, where Nat did her patented drop into an alley (which, it turns out, she could cloak). She then brought the car seamlessly into city traffic.

They parked in a parking garage and headed for the hotel across the street. Nat dialed something on her phone, and put it to her ear. But she didn’t speak, and soon hung up, as though no one had answered.

“Have you checked that he was staying here?” Ellie said.

“Didn’t have to,” Nat replied. “Steve Rogers is a man of habit, and there was no reason for him to break this one today.”

They walked into the lobby of a hotel, and Nat ushered Ellie toward the attached bar. Ellie settled onto a bar stool, just barely getting her foot propped up in a minimally comfortable way, while Nat ordered them drinks.

“The capital is here in town, right?” Ellie said, “So he’s cashing in favors from… politicians?”

“Trying to get ahead of some of this unification business,” Nat said as she picked up a drink and swirled it.

“Unification?” Ellie said, with a sinking feeling in her gut. “Of who?”

“Everybody,” Nat said. “Complete integration of electronic systems.” 

Zola’ voice rang through Ellie’s head. He had total control of her homeworld’s electronics. He could leap through the system with amazing speed and precognizance. He could be literally anywhere there was a computer, because of the shared network that he controlled.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Ellie said. “Especially with Zola in the picture.”

Nat swirled her drink with a stone face. “I tend to agree.”

“So Steve’s stopping it?”

Nat slowly cocked her head and pursed her lips.

“Oh my God,” Ellie said.

“Drink your drink, Ellie,” Nat said. 

Ellie willed her rage back, and looked at an orange-colored drink in front of her, absentmindedly sipped it, and discovered it was nonalcoholic.

She looked to Nat.

“Hang on to that anger,” Nat said. “It’s a useful weapon. Treat it with the same respect you’d show those sweet knives you got. Don’t waste a blow or a bullet. Don’t throw it until the time is right. Timing is everything.”

Ellie looked at the drink, and intentionally started slowing her breathing. She consciously pushed her shoulders away from her ears, and sat herself back down on the stool in a sustainable way. She didn’t realize she’d physically gotten her hackles up so thoroughly.

Her own dad was so smart, so smart and so careful. Surely this Steve will understand. Surely, he won’t think this is a good idea.

Ellie felt a wave of terror flow through her, the likes of which she hadn’t felt since she woke up in this strange world. If this unification thing happens, this place will head straight toward the Confederation of Hydra. It would become the hellhole she came from, that her parents fought so valiantly to change. 

She couldn’t sit here and watch it happen. She wouldn’t let her parents down like that. She would do every single thing in her power to stop this from happening.

She had time to collect herself, nurse that drink and then another, and count the wooden tiles around the bar area. Then Nat did something Ellie couldn’t quite put her finger on to get her attention. When Ellie looked out the glass front of the bar, she found Steve’s face coming down the street, toward the hotel.

Ellie stood up where she was, and shivered.

He was in a suit, actual folders in his hand, clearly having come from talking numbers and projections and terrible terrible details with politicians planning to disrupt all that was good.

Surely he understood. Surely he had misgivings she could find in him. They needed him. She needed him. He had to be made to understand.

When he reached the hotel entrance, she walked to the arch between the bar and the lobby, and froze. When he walked across the nearly empty lobby toward the elevator, she willed her legs to thaw and began following him.

He got to the call button. The elevator car opened instantly, and Ellie’s heart raced. 

Steve stepped into the empty car, turned around, and pressed something. And as he pulled his arm away from the panel of buttons, Ellie reached the car and stepped in.

The door closed behind her, and they were alone.

“Ellie!” Steve smiled with surprise.

“What are you doing? What are you telling them to do?”

His smile faded at her fear, and he made that placating face adults always did, because they didn’t ever understand how old she already had to be. Because they didn’t understand how much she knew.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Ellie said through gritted teeth, as she dug her thumb into the ring on her finger. “I need to know what you’re telling them to do. TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR.”

“Ellie,” Steve put a hand out, reaching for her arm.

“Because if it’s the wrong thing,” Ellie continued, “I swear to God I’ll fight you. I’ll fight you too. If that’s what it takes.”

She dimly heard a ding, and people began filing into the elevator around them. A grim Steve ushered her gently and quietly off the elevator.

He pulled his wallet out as they walked down a hall.  By the time he’d pulled a green card out with a large arrow, they’d reached his room, and he inserted the card into a slot on the door.

He held the door for her. For a split second Ellie questioned being in a room alone with him. But he wasn’t the bad guy. She would swear it. This was Ian’s dad. He was just wrong. They’d talk. She’d make him see.

She entered, and he followed in after her.

“Ellie, sit down,” Steve said with a fatigued gentleness. He motioned to a loveseat. Ellie sat down stiffly, staring straight ahead and breathing heavily. Steve sat down next to her, also facing awkwardly forward, in a similar state of discomfort.

“I’m fighting for peace,” Steve said. “Just as I always have. I’ve always fought for peace, for safety. For the best life for the most people.”

Ellie felt tears begin to fall down her cheeks.

“Who are you trading off?” she asked quietly.

“What?” Steve asked with alarm.

“You said most people. Peace for the most people. Not all people. Who are you trading off in this deal?” Ellie said.

Steve sighed, and tilted his head. “This isn’t a trade, per se. This is what’s best for everybody.”

“Consolidating power? That’s what this is, isn’t it?” Ellie asked. “Did you know Zola’s involved?”

“Well, he shouldn’t be, and I don’t know how you know that. But if he turns up, he’ll be controlled. Everyone involved has the best interests of the people at heart, Ellie. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“You’re fighting for fascism.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “I know… I know you’re new here-”

“I KNOW FASCISM, STEVE. MAYBE BETTER THAN YOU.”

She could see his patience straining but he still kept calm, and kept a strange kindness to his voice.

“Ellie, I don’t want people to hurt. That’s the last thing I want. I want less people to hurt.”

“How will this accomplish that?” She switched tactics.

“More accord, Ellie,” Steve said. “More working together. Worldwide. Fewer armies. Fewer soldiers. More transparency; everyone will communicate more. Fewer secrets to kill over.”

Ellie shook her head, and more tears flowed. She hated so much that she cried when she was angry. No one else in her family did this. She couldn’t help it. 

“That’s not what will happen,” Ellie said.

“Ellie, a lot of people have thought long and hard about this. They’ve planned-”

“I haven’t seen - haven’t heard - any actual, concrete details. Specifics. Who’s making this decision?” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“Well, as you can see, it’s hard to understand. Only a few folks have really researched the effects.”

Ellie looked at him wide-eyed. 

“Aren’t people supposed to have control over their own lives?” she asked him.

“And this will give them more of that, Ellie,” Steve said. “The best minds in the world believe this is the way to do it.”

She felt numb. Ellie felt numb, and she thought she might throw up.

“I want to understand, I want to understand you better,” Ellie said.

“Ellie, there’s nothing that would please me more than to have the chance to get to know you better, and welcome you into the family.”

Ellie frantically reached for something else. “Sharon… mentioned lately. Your time travel.”

“What?” Steve looked confused as he took in what she’d said. Then his brow furrowed in a way that made Ellie think he would refuse to discuss it. “Oh my word.”

“I guess I just…” she continued to push, “it made me think of my own... traveling.”

Steve’s face softened warily at that.

“What was it like?” she asked.

“Ellie, I…” Steve said, then he softly shook his head. “Well, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about it recently. I’ve thought about that event quite a lot lately, actually.”

He shifted a foot to stretch his leg.

“It was a harrowing experience. It certainly had an element of… displacement about it, that I’m certain would be familiar to you. To see people I knew, long ago. To experience my own life again, out of chronological order. It was very difficult to wrap my head around, and I don’t remember a great deal clearly, truth be told.”

“Why have you been thinking of it lately?”

“It’s funny you should bring it up, really. It’s part of my inspiration in backing this governmental restructuring.”

“How so?” Ellie was both intensely curious, and terrified of what she’d find in this conversation.

“I saw the future too, on that trip,” Steve said. He paused to look in her eyes. “I saw two futures, in fact. One was… apocalyptic. Many of my friends and loved ones were dead. Some sort of enemy was attacking us globally, all at once. An alien race, I suppose. The planet was in ruins.”

Ellie look at him, and saw the fear in his eyes.

“The other…” he continued, “had you in it. You, and Sharon, and Ian. I hadn’t even met you yet, but you were there. We were in the house, the house we showed you. And we were safe, and happy.”

“That’s why you wanted us at the house. You were trying to capture that.”

“Yes, but you see, the fact that we made it happen, that’s a very good sign! We’ve brought that timeline about, instead of the other one,” Steve said with a weary smile.

“What if they were both the same timeline?” she asked. “What if you… let the first one happen in order to secure the second one?”

“I wouldn’t do that, Ellie.”

“No.” Ellie blinked back more tears. “I believe you wouldn’t. Not intentionally.” 

Ellie hesitated on her next words. Then she thought,  _ might as well _ .

“Did you change anything?” she asked. “Before those futures appeared? Did you do anything differently?”

“I, uh…” Steve’s brow furrowed again. “No, I…” 

He stared at the floor a moment.

“I made a commitment not to change anything.” He scanned the air around them for more details. “I met with the man who made my serum, asked him about… stopping Hitler. About using time travel to stop all manner of evil. And he said I shouldn’t. I’d damage the timeline, cause many more consequences than I could imagine. So, I promised myself I wouldn’t.”

“And you kept that promise?” she asked.

“I…” Steve looked almost like he was confidently racing up to a precipice, over and over again, only to get there and realize he wasn’t sure of anything.

“I’m certain I did,” he said, bewildered.

“What were you doing when you saw those futures?” Ellie asked.

“I was, ah... “ Steve thought. “It was during the war. World War II, I mean. Isn’t that odd? I’ve fought in so many by now, can’t just say “the war” anymore. It was… I was…”

As he searched for words, Ellie’s gaze bore into him, willing him with all of her heart to keep going.

“I was on a rocket.” Steve nodded once, then stopped. “No, I was… I wasn’t on a rocket. We weren’t on it. That was the difference. I stopped Bucky. I kept him from getting on the… the drone plane. I stopped him.”

Steve looked at her, and repeated himself.

“I stopped him.”

The hairs on Ellie’s neck were on standing on end. Steve spoke gently. But there was something in his voice, when he said he stopped Bucky... something that rattled her bones.   

“Stopped him from what? Kept him from what?”

“Something terrible. I… I feel certain I should remember. But I don’t. I… I feel like I used to know.”

Ellie felt quite cold.

“I saved him from the drone,” he said. “I saved him from the explosion. The drone was a trap, it blew up. We were both very lucky not to be on it.”

“You broke your promise,” she whispered.

Steve frowned. “I did. For Bucky. To save him.” Steve got a faraway look in his eye again. “He didn’t deserve what happened.”

“So he’s had a long happy life, instead of… what, death?”

Steve shook his head sorrowfully, and whispered. “No. I don’t know what, but it was worse than death.”

“And you haven’t stopped to ask, what the consequences might be?”

“We’ve both fought for this country, over and over again. For decades. He took a serum too, to keep doing it. To keep giving back to people. I can’t imagine that really affecting much.”

“He’s done a lot to push this through, hasn’t he?” Ellie asked.

“He believes in it, Ellie. Many of us do.”

Ellie nodded. “Do you know about the earthquake in Latveria?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “And recovery would be much easier with unification in place. There would be more political pressure on Doom to let us help.” 

_ Get to the meat of it, Ellie. If you can help him make any connection, that’ll be the way. _

“Who was responsible for the time travel?”

“Hm?” Steve replied.

“Did you decide yourself to take a harrowing stroll through the time stream?”  she asked.

“No,” Steve sighed. “That was Red Skull, who’s dead. And Zola, who’s weak. And Doom. Who’s… Doom.”

“Natasha thinks the earthquake is related to your time travel.”

“I’m not at all sure why she would think that,” Steve replied.

“Take me to Latveria, then.”

“What? Ellie…”

“If you’re sure it’s not involved, take me.”

“Ellie, what I’m trying to tell you is, they’re terribly secretive and isolationist. And Doom is… it’s not a vacation spot.”

Ellie took in a breath and groped for words. And when she couldn’t find any, she flopped herself back on the loveseat, exhausted.

“Steve. What about Ian?”  _ Make it personal, Ellie _ . “Was it in Ian’s best interests to be detained?”

“No, it certainly wasn’t,” Steve said sharply, angry at someone who wasn’t her.  “And if he hadn’t bolted and gone into hiding, I would have corrected that mistake as soon as I discovered it.”

“What about Sam?”

“What about him?” Steve asked.

“Didn’t they tell you he’s being detained too?”

Steve’s demeanor turned instantly grave. He whipped out his phone and called a number. Ellie guessed it was Sam’s, because no one answered.

As Steve leapt up to pace and call another number in anger, there was a knock on the door.

“Oh shit,” Ellie said, “Natasha. She’s downstairs! I completely forgot.”

Steve rambled in a distracted voice, shaking his head. “Ellie, you’re a grown woman, and I’m not your father. But I do wish you wouldn’t use language like that, it’s-”

He dove headfirst into the phone call, while Ellie swung the door open.

“Hey,” Ellie said apologetically.

“Hey,” Natasha said, unfazed. “I thought you two could stand a few minutes of privacy. Okay if I join you now, though?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ellie said. “He’s… he just found out about Sam, I guess.”

Steve continued being authoritative with someone on the phone. It sounded like he was already being transferred to a higher-up.

“How is it going?” Natasha asked.

Ellie threw up her hands, as she led Nat to the loveseat. “I’m too young to understand. He saved Bucky and everything’s fine now. A more exploitable system is absolutely best for everybody.” 

“Sounds about right, I guess,” Nat said.

Steve, call complete, had his phone gripped tightly in his hand as he strode back toward them.

“Oh, shit, Steve, sorry,” Ellie said. “Do you mind if I let Natasha in your hotel room? I don’t even know where y’all are... at. Y’know, personally.”

“It’s fine, Ellie,” Steve said as he approached them. “Natasha’s family.”

He and Natasha hugged warmly. And Ellie realized Steve had asked her to stop swearing several minutes ago.

“Language, shit, I’m...” she said, “sorry.”

Steve raised a pained hand, in what was clearly a request for her to stop apologizing if it involved profanity. 

“Sam is being released as we speak,” Steve said, “and being handed a plane ticket home. I have a few more phone calls to make, to make clear my feelings on this matter to a few more people.” 

“Natasha!” Ellie said, realizing the resource she now had. “Explain why you think the earthquake is involved with Steve’s time travel.”

She felt like an idiot, making such an graceless, obvious appeal. But her subtler, more masterful plotting hadn’t accomplished much anyway.

“Hoo boy,” Natasha said. “Straight to the hard science, huh? Okay, mister lobbyist. Sit down and get comfortable.”

“Just a minute. I’ll listen to your further argument on one condition,” Steve said.

“What’s that?” Natasha said.

“My meetings are done here,” Steve said. “And you-” He turned to Natasha, “deserve a home cooked meal.”

“Ugh. You want us back at that damn house, don’t you?” Ellie said. “Shit! Sorry. SHIT!”

Steve and Nat kindly gave her a moment to bury her face in her hands, in an attempt to relocate her dignity, before their travel began.


	9. The Key

An hour later, Ellie sat with Steve and Natasha in the flying car. Nothing they’d said had swayed Steve on his conviction that unification - a major integration of worldwide financial and data systems - was anything other than a great stride forward for empathy and honest communication. Not discussion of its potential for misuse, not mentions of Zola’s involvement, not even a peek at dizzying time travel science specs that Steve seemed to comprehend way past what Ellie got out of it.

Steve was unmoved so far… with the single concession that he set up a phone meeting with his Latverian contact. Steve was convinced that absolutely nothing would come of it - nothing ever had come from meeting with a Latverian, he said - but the minister’s assistant agreed to what Steve called a touchpoint phone call tomorrow.

Ellie felt the strange rhythm of the car’s flight beneath her, thinking she had no confidence anything would come of the meeting either. But they were trying *something.* And that’s all any of them could think to do.

And Sam was free. One more person that seemed trustworthy was out of custody, on his own recognizance.

After a certain point, Steve just refused to hear any more arguments. It was time to rest, he said. He had to make his point several times, but eventually Ellie had reluctantly agreed to put the topic to bed, just for now. She was exhausted and out of ideas, anyway. 

The conversation then moved to what music they should be playing on the ride. What had begun as a disagreement between Natasha and Steve about what station to have it on had evolved into an unpacking of the deeper elements of various types of jazz music. Ellie closed her eyes and listened.

“You know I love his experimental work,” Steve said, “but it’s really not… it’s not soothing, or calming. It’s not meant to be.”

“Well, who says we need easy listening, for God’s sake, Steve?”

“Nat, there’s a whole lot of music that lands in between Miles’ free jazz and elevator music. I’m just asking for something calming. It doesn’t *have* to be Barry Manilow, for heaven’s sake.”

Nat grunted in exaggerated pain.

As Ellie’s mind wandered, looking for a grasp on Steve’s point, she suddenly heard shattering glass on either side of her head.

She instinctively squeezed her eyes shut and shielded her face with her hands. That’s when the blinding pain rammed her gut. 

Ellie found herself struggling to get air into her lungs after the blow, and she could feel the car lurch underneath her. 

It had all happened in an instant. 

As the sound of shattering glass faded, Ellie chanced a look around her, and found the punch must have come from the strangest limb she’d ever seen, now reaching through the broken window closest to her. The arm was a inexplicable shock of neon green fur.

As she took in the image before her, Ellie felt the creature’s broad grip lock around her right knee. As she spun away from it, looking for a handhold, the creature attempted to pull her from the car by her leg. 

She suddenly felt incredibly groggy.  _ Did I get drugged somehow? _

_ Was the creature flying too? Hovering? Stuck to the side of the car? What the hell was going on?  _

The convertible’s top was now gone, and a painfully bright light was thrown on the whole car. Ellie had been in fights plenty of times before, but time and visuals seem to be flowing particularly strangely in this one. She struggled to see the front seat clearly - to find Steve and Nat - and couldn’t. She kicked her assailant with her free leg with the most unpredictable pattern she could muster, and fought to stay in the car. 

Ellie felt her holster tear as the pistol was ripped away. She debated the risk of reaching for the knife tied around her neck; it was tempting even with her strong preference for keeping hold of the car seat. But she soon lost her grip with one hand, and then the other. 

By then, her vision was starting to dim. She realized her sluggishness correlated with the creature’s touch. Could it be the fur? Whatever the transmission mechanism, it worked fast.

She realized Steve was fighting something that had attacked him, and she saw Nat pull one arm away from her own assailant to reach for Ellie.

Then Ellie lost consciousness.

  
  
  


She came to sluggishly, with a splitting headache, forehead stinging against the metal grate below it. The air still rushing past her ears suggested that she hadn’t been out for long.

She had been dumped unceremoniously on the open ramp of the cargo hold on a very small ship. From what she could see of the blurry surroundings, she guessed they weren’t far from where she had been taken out of the car… though she couldn’t see the car in the immediate space around them. 

Before she even finished examining her surroundings, she decided to risk a knife reach.  If there was any element of surprise to be had, it was right now.

In one motion she grabbed the hilt and released the blade, then swung it forward right as her assailant came into focus to grab for her leg again. Ellie managed a long gash on the creature’s arm.

It was startled enough to recoil, and Ellie scrabbled to roll away as quickly as she could. 

She soon found the far end of the ramp into the bay, and clutched a handhold as she surveyed her surroundings. She wasn’t close enough to the edge to see straight down, but the ground was clearly far, far below. There was no surviving a leap from this height. Her sight was still somewhat dim at the edges, but the car didn’t appear anywhere close by. 

She scanned the inside of the ship and saw no parachutes. The creature had recovered from its surprise, and seemed undeterred by its injury. It did realize, though, that she had nowhere to go, and that the fall behind her was worth avoiding. It eyed her thoughtfully, and moved slowly to ring her in.

Ellie slid on her belly toward a side edge of the ramp, clutching for handholds as she went. If she could make the side wall of the cargo bay, she could potentially climb around the outside of the ship… assuming she found decent footing. 

The creature seemed to realize her plan shortly after she hatched it, and moved to intercept her before she got there.

Ellie refused to let the thing touch her, so she slid down the ramp again, coming all the way to its furthest corner. She could now swing her head over the edge, wind assaulting her ears and filling her head with noise. But she still found no allies nor solid ground anywhere nearby. 

Just as her attention turned back to the creature, a blossom of a fireball grew out of the corner of her eye. Ellie turned to see the light from an explosion light up the remains of a car far below. Her sight was blurred, but it looked like a convertible. 

She couldn’t take that in right now. The creature was losing patience and closing in, and she was planning the only escape route she could see: a white-knuckle climb across the bottom side of the open ramp. 

As that thought crossed her mind, her would-be kidnappers’ partner in the pilot’s seat of their ship must have realized that they should probably close the back door. The ramp Ellie gripped was now raising itself up to close the open maw of the hangar.

Ellie really didn’t want to be cooped up with the rude furball and his friend, but she also had no idea what handholds awaited her on the outside of the hostile and foreign ship she was about to hang off of in midair.

She said a prayer, grabbed the last grippable ridge of the ramp, and curled her feet around to fight for purchase on the outside hull.

She found a few footfalls that might be grips, but she’d have no way of knowing until she could visually inspect what was going on. She’d have to dip her head down to see, but she hadn’t figured out just how she’d manage that without letting go. 

The ramp slowly continued to close. The creature roared above the noise of the wind and jumped to swipe for an arm that Ellie just managed to move in time. 

And then a new surge of terror struck her.  Someone below the ship had just firmly grabbed hold of her good foot. And they weren’t letting go. 

In shock, Ellie hung limp and vulnerable.

_ There were other assailants, _ she remembered.  _ Attacking Steve and Nat. Were they in other ships? Did one double back for me? _

Ellie was out of ideas. Stretched across two flying points of contact, in midair, ridiculously high, she was thrown out of fight mode entirely. She simply felt absurd, and lost. Her whole life flashed before her in an instant. In one overwhelming moment of terror she nearly gave up, imagining herself kicking free of everything and soaring downwards to shed of all this trouble, and to see her parents again. 

It took everything inside of her to fight that impulse… to make the choice to stay. 

The ramp was nearly shut. Ellie decided the unseen foe couldn’t be any worse than the dangerous ship hull that may or may not provide for her. She might have a fighting chance with whatever had her foot. She might get a moment to rest and regroup.

She took a deep breath, and released her grip on the only handhold she had, right as the ship swallowed it up.

She felt the arm that gripped her retract, and pull her in tight. As an arm closed around her waist, and her shoulder slammed something, Ellie caught a dazed glimpse of the vehicle under her now. 

It looked like a motorcycle.

As she realized she’d slotted into the space in front of the rider, she turned to look, and found Ian’s face.

She sat there numb as he reached past their tangle of limbs to pilot whatever it was they were riding in an upward trajectory.

There were smaller explosions below her - perhaps gunfire against the helm of her would-be transport -  and it soon seemed like the fight melted away. 

Ellie had dealt with surprise attacks before. She knew her delayed responses were shock. She decided she didn’t have to push through the shock this time… that Ian seemed to have the situation handled. 

So she stared dumbfounded at the remains of a fight fading away from them rather quickly, and at her new mode of transport… the third type of flying vehicle she’d been in during the last absurd hour.

“HI,” she called out over the heavy wind.

“HI,” Ian yelled back.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT??” she cried.

“I KNOW, RIGHT?” he replied.

“STEVE AND NAT-”

“THEY’RE OKAY,” Ian said.

The flying motorcycle offered even less wind protection for its passengers than the open cargo bay had.

“JUST RELAX,” Ian said, reading her mind. “I’LL EXPLAIN WHEN WE LAND.”

She was practically sitting in his lap sidesaddle, when - just like a bike - the much more reasonable place for her to be would be straddling the seat behind him. But, she didn’t particularly feel up for midair acrobatics to get herself back there. And Ian seemed to be unperturbed and piloting fine. 

Ellie was once again exhausted… and Ian might as well be a brother. So she curled up and laid her head on his shoulder. She wouldn’t sleep, but she could let go of any real need of consciousness. It would conserve her energy.

  
  
  


Some time later, they were slowly rolling through a meadow near an open stretch of highway. Ellie could see the lights of a strange town some ways down the road, competing with the glow of a sun about to rise.

Ellie knew her own surroundings so well back home. She was tired of being places she didn’t recognize in the slightest.

As they came to a stop, she stiffly uncurled herself and slid off the bike, with Ian’s help.

“Easy,” Ian said. “That drug they use lingers longer than you’d think.”

“What are those things?” she slurred as she stumbled.

“I dunno, some kind of mutants,” Ian said. 

Ellie groaned and held her head, willing it to spin less.

“Not even sure how many there really are,” Ian said. 

Ellie tried to make him come into focus. He was moving back and forth doing something.

“A merry little band of muppets,” he muttered. “Coming after us all.”

“Mph,” said Ellie.

“With some lifelong grudge against solar plexuses,” he continued.

Ellie squinted. Ian caught her gaze and gave a lopsided grin.

“Solar plexi?” Ian asked.

“What are you doing?”

“Hiding the bike,” he explained patiently. “We need some lower profile transportation.”

Ian had several fallen branches in his hand, which she supposed explained the bending over he had been doing. They had stopped between a large grassy field and a copse of trees. He added what he had in his hands to a pile of branches beginning to obscure the bike.

Ellie’s head felt like it might spin off and fly away, but also felt like it would simultaneously much rather be closer to the ground. She managed a controlled fall, and curled her legs up crisscrossed underneath her.

“Heeey there,” Ian said calmly, coming to check on her. “Yeah, that stuff stays with you, even with a Rogers metabolism.”

He put a hand to her back and slowly rubbed her shoulders, the way her mom would when she was nauseous. It helped. 

“I tried to have some water for you,” Ian said, “by the time we caught up. But, uh, my supplies ran into some mishaps.”

“You must have been… tracking us?”

“Well, you. I didn’t know Dad and Nat would be there.” He sat next to her. “We’re not in a huge rush. We can sit here a few minutes, let you get your bearings.”

“You came for me?”

“Of course,” he said.

Ellie stared at him. She realized for the first time that he had the most ridiculously rugged face. The kind of face that should sell something very manly in an advertisement. It was a terrible face for a wannabe older brother.  He should be showing off his cigars or his watch or his alcoholic drink.

“You came for me,” she repeated.

He looked uncomfortable.

“Rest here,” he said. “I’m gonna… cover the bike.”

He took his kindness and his ridiculous rugged jawline back over to the bike and began arranging the branches across it in a fuller pattern.

“Are Steve and Nat okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, they took out some other hostiles and got away.”

“Why aren’t we with them?”

Ian stopped what he was doing and absentmindedly examined the twig in his hands. 

“I’m not at all sure who to trust at this point,” he said.

“I think Steve and Nat are okay, don’t you?” Ellie asked.

Ian squinted at her thoughtfully.

“Oh dear,” she said, bewildered.

“I might have been wrong when I said you’d be less of a target here,” Ian said.

“What?” Ellie asked. 

“I don’t know why,” Ian said. “But the mid-management boss ordering around that muppet gang was very upset they didn’t bring you in. I’m pretty sure you were the primary target when they came for us.”

Ellie stared at the ground for several seconds, thinking.

“What’s a muppet?” she asked.

“I’ll show you my favorite videos,” Ian smiled wanly. “Later. In the meantime, let’s just rest here.”

“We’re stuck. We’re lost-”

“No, I know where we are,” Ian reasoned. “We’re not injured, and we’ve got room to breathe. Let’s just take some time here. Wait til the sun comes up. You don’t look like you feel very good.”

“I’m not a reason to stop!” she yelled.

“Ellie, that’s not a criticism. I’m saying we’ve got the luxury to rest a minute. So let’s do that.”

Ellie was so tense, mentally and emotionally eager to fight, while her body was stiff and queasy and exhausted.

“Unification isn’t a coincidence,” Ellie said. They were alone and she was going to take advantage of that by speaking freely. Maybe if she started pouring her thoughts out, her head might throb less.

“No,” Ian said mournfully. “I’m starting to think it’s not.”

“Zola’s involved.” Ellie spit the words out, and immediately regretted them. He needed to know but she hated telling him. “I’m sorry.”

Ian’s nose wrinkled and his brow furrowed, his whole face contorted in disgust at the thought of his biological father in any dimension.

“Yeah,” Ian said. “I was starting to recognize the stench.”

“Barnes is working with him,” Ellie continued.

“Bucky? Shit.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy.”

“Not the one I met.” Ellie felt her own face twist up at the memory. “Ian, the timeline changed. Nat and the others figured it out. Steve went skipping around, a couple years back?”

“Uhh… yeah, I heard something about that. Wasn’t long before he found me.”

“He made a decision.” Ellie willed the drug to fade and stop tilting the whole planet around her.  “He told me… this Steve, affected by the earthquake… or what caused it. He changed things. He saved Bucky from something, something big. Who knows what else changed.”

Ian stared at her, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

“Oh Jesus,” he finally whispered. His eyes started darting around, piecing together clues. “Oh dammit, that’s it. God dammit it, Dad.”

Ellie thought Ian’s heart might be breaking. He rubbed his forehead several times, then threaded his fingers together and dropped his hands between his thighs in resignation. Ellie hurt to see him that way. She hadn’t seen anything touch him like that before.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I know what he did. What he must have done, and… he was just trying to help,” Ian said. “Bucky went through some… brutal stuff. Dad just wanted to lift that burden off of him. That’s all he wanted to do.”

Steve had deep compassion in every dimension, Ellie thought.

“So that’s the whole reason for all of this?” Ian asked bitterly. “Dad’s kindness brought all this into being? Dad’s kindness is really going to turn him into somebody he wouldn’t want to be? Kindness is going to bring the world to the brink of Zola taking this planet too?”

“No, Ian,” Ellie insisted. “It wasn’t your dad’s tender heart that did all this. It was Zola - and whoever else is working with him - manipulating all this. It was the guys that threw him around in time, the ones who forced that choice on Steve. They’re the problem here.”

Her mouth had gone dry and felt like cotton, but she kept going, searching for anything that might help Ian just then.

“So we just… now we know. We’ve determined the cause, the first domino,” she said. “We just have to… well… Steve and Sharon were involved, you see. In the original incident. The… the consequences of which just got exploded in a delayed reaction. The link between them - and the gun too - is what… what the whole original incident orbited around. That made tangible the bond between them, you see? So we know now that we need to get them involved in fixing it. We need their bond. And maybe the gun, I’m not sure. But definitely their bond, their connection to each other.”

She looked around, as though the answer might be written across the sunrise above, or the soft green vegetation around them.

Ian looked at her with something strange written across his face.

“We know that much now,” she said. “We need that link again. We just need to convince them both. We can do that, I’m sure I made a little headway with Steve. Laid a foundation. Maybe.” Ellie couldn’t let herself doubt. “We’ll get there. They’ll have to help. We need - the bad guys will need - some kind, maybe any kind of physical link between Steve and Sharon to function as the some part of the solution, some part of…”

She looked at Ian again. He was definitely looking at her with fear.

“Oh,” Ellie said numbly. “I think I know why I’m being targeted.”

She got up without thinking. And she sat down next to him, and continued.

“Probably…” she said. “There’s probably something that makes sense in here, about time travel physics? They were linked, for this to happen. And now there’s me, I’m a link. Between them. Or another version of them. Kind of.”

Ian put her arm around her possessively.

“You’re worried about me,” Ellie said, a bit astounded. 

“I like you, ya dope.” He pulled away and sniffled, still looking rattled.

“Well, that seems ill-advised. But okay,” Ellie offered. “But the goal is the same,” she said. “Same as it was before. Do the right thing. Protect the ones with less power. Help everybody be free, best we can. Always.”

Ian met her gaze with a thoughtful frown and nodded. Then he threw an arm around her and hugged her close.


	10. The Arrest

About thirty minutes later, a sturdier Ian and Ellie were waiting on the side of the road, scanning for cars.

“This road seems dead,” Ellie said.

“We’ll get somebody,” Ian said. “Eventually.”

“Have we decided where we’re going?” Ellie said.

“Well, the nearest town first,” Ian replied.

“No, I had caught on there, believe it or not,” she ribbed. “But after that?”

“After getting water and food?”

“Yeah.” Ellie said. “I mean,” she shrugged dramatically. “I know where I’m going.”

Ian looked over his shoulder at her.

“I just wanted to see if you were coming with,” she said, with a lopsided grin.

Ian nodded with a begrudging approval. “Welp. After getting to the nearest town, and acquiring some supplies, Latveria was my plan.” He looked at her with an exaggerated questioning face.

Ellie frowned theatrically, and see-sawed her head back and forth a few times.

“Latveria’s an option, I suppose,” Ellie said. “What do we need to get there?”

“Not much more than we’ve got.”

A vehicle began to approach, and Ellie stuck her thumb way out - the gesture Ian had instructed - in hopes that she was visible from far enough away for them to consider stopping.

As they came closer, the vehicle turned out to be a big rusty van with two burly, scruffy white men in the driver and passenger seats. They slowed way down and waved and smiled at Ellie, making motions to get a door open for her. 

Then, when Ian came forward and waved at them, their smiles disappeared and they drove off.

“Hunh,” Ellie said. “That’s not creepy at all.”

“They need a soprano for the glee club, but not a baritone, I suppose,” Ian replied.

“That must be it. You realize we’re just gonna die here on this abandoned highway?”

“Oh, now who’s the optimist?” Ian replied.

“I’m just pointing out that this road you picked out for us is practically deserted,” she said. “We’ve seen one car.”

“We haven’t been here that long, jeez.”

With that, a small blue vehicle became visible. It turned into a long sedan driven by a wiry, slumped man with a ruddy leather face in neatly pressed, pale blue coveralls.

He saw Ellie, and Ian now standing directly behind her. He slowed to a stop and greeted them.

“Hi there,” he chirped. “There’s not a lot of traffic out here.”

“Yeah, we were beginning to notice,” Ellie said.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, we appreciate you stopping,” Ian said. “We, uh, our car died - like dead-dead - way back, and we’re just trying to get some help these last few miles. It’s been a rough day, my sister hurt her foot.”

“Oh dear. Well, climb on in, you two,” the man said.

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

“Thanks very much,” Ian said.

Ian held the back door open for Ellie, and they got settled into the car. The carpet beneath her was worn but spotlessly tidy. Ellie was glad to have an empty back seat, with room to prop up and rest her painful foot.

“Shame about your car,” the man said, as his spindly arms reached around the wide wheel to steer the car back onto the road. “They get more expensive and more poorly made with each passing year,” he said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Ian said, in a tone of voice Ellie didn’t recognize in him. “Don’t know what we’ll manage now.”

“Should we drop you all off at the hospital?” The driver asked. “Do you need your foot looked at, miss?”

“Oh, no thank you, sir,” Ian replied. “If you can just get us into town, we have friends there we can bother. They live near the bus depot. We’ll get her some ice, she should be okay.”

“Alrighty, alrighty,” the man said. “Well, my name’s Paul, it’s a pleasure to meet you both.

“Oh, I’m Bill,” Ian said. “This is my sister, Pam.”

“Bill,” Paul said. “Miss Pam.”

Paul nodded. Ian nodded. Ellie watched them both quietly.

“How about that game, huh?” Ian replied, shaking his head and using that same strange tone of voice.

“Oh, well then!” Paul bellowed, then he laughed. “You have any money on that?”

“Boy, did I?” Ian said with a smile.

“I tell you what, every one of them coaches is paid way too much for stunts like that.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Ian replied.

Paul got momentarily distracted looking at a mileage sign, while Ian leaned over his shoulder and winked at a confused Ellie.

_ Wow _ , Ellie thought.  _ When folks here small talk, they really small talk.  _

“Say, do you watch Bloodlines of Conquest?” Paul asked.

Ian was slow to respond, and Ellie had an idea.

“Oh! He doesn’t, but I do!” Ellie said.

“Oh my word, Nelly!” Paul boomed again.

“Did you see the… the last one?” Ellie asked with fake astonishment. What did they call tv shows? 

“It blew me away,” Paul said. “I was stunned. I was just stunned.”

“I can’t believe he did that.” Ellie wondered as the words came out of her mouth what tone she should have, what words she should emphasize. Did a man do anything surprising in the last viewing? What was the show called again? Something about Conquest?

“Well, I tell you,” Paul said. “I really thought, I really thought he was going to be more trustworthy than that. I know! That’s on me.” 

Paul raised a hand in self defense as his other hand gripped the wheel.

“I knew it was probably a bad idea,” he chuckled. “I was misguided. I’m an old softie. But there you are. I really just got fooled.”

“It just goes to show you,” Ian said, shaking his head.

“It really does,” Paul said, nodding emphatically. “It really, really does.”

Ellie aimed to interject something. “Mm-hm.” She nodded.

A moment passed, and then another.

“Call me crazy,” Ellie said. “But I think the show’s gotten even better. Since it started.”

“Oh I agree one hundred percent. Bill, you really should, you really should watch. Whole new thing. They’re just rewriting how stories are told nowadays.”

“No way,” Ian said.

“It’s the God’s honest truth," Paul said. "I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Ellie marveled at the man’s ease and comfort, so relaxed with strangers, talking about sports and drama that he thought they shared with him. On the one hand, she felt a bit bad now, deceiving him. But it seemed to bring him joy chatting about it. 

She wondered if she’d be around long enough to develop a favorite drama to rave about to total strangers. If she’d ever have that kind of leisure time, to take in entertainment. It had been years since they’d managed much of anything at home. She mostly reread a handful of favorite old books. 

Soon the radio was on, and Ian and Ellie were hearing Paul’s argument on why a particular country singer shouldn’t be considered a part of a particular genre of country music. They passed the time with several such conversations that were easy to keep one-sided. Paul was chatty.

Ellie marveled at the ordinariness of the conversation. No time travel, no mention of dimensions. No translating her own experience into something that might be comprehensible to another person. No constantly navigating the gaps she had between herself and literally everyone else she met. Just one guy happy to ramble on presenting good-natured arguments on frivolous topics, perfectly happy to assume that Ian and Ellie knew exactly what he was talking about.

Ellie found the sound of his voice soothing, and allowed her mind to just drift away for a little while, and watch the green roll by.

  
  
  


Soon Paul had gotten them to town. Ian said. “Thank you for your help, my sister and I really appreciate it, sir.”

“Well, it wasn’t anything. You keep an eye on her, okay?”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

Ellie smiled and waved goodbye.

“How did you know he watched a game?” she asked.

“Oh, there’s always a game,” Ian said. 

Ellie smiled, then frowned. “How are we gonna pay for any of this travel? AND keep our names hidden?”

“I got hold of some resources before I went for you.”

Ellie investigated his eyes again.

“You really weren’t tracking down Nat or Steve,” she said.

Ian caught her gaze and held it as they walked.

“No, I really wasn’t,” he said.

He looked ahead again and they walked in silence.

“Dork,” he said a few seconds later.

Ellie smiled, and felt something inside that - if pressed on the topic - she might identify as a pleasant feeling.

  
  


They had time to stop at a food store, and fill up a backpack Ian had brought with food and water. Then they jogged to the bus depot to get there in time. Ellie was relieved that Ian didn’t get too solicitous about her foot. She preferred when compatriots just let her manage it herself without butting in. 

Soon they were boarding their bus, beginning the next leg of the journey. Then she could rest her foot without making a fuss about it. They both sank into soft, tall chairs that smelled of sweat, all crammed together in tight rows, and began traveling further down the road.

“You get much leisurely traveling done back home?” Ian asked, as the scenery out the window began to blur.

“Oh yeah, scenic vacations between one abandoned building and another,” Ellie said.

“Of course.”

“No, definitely not leisure traveling,” she said. “We were rushing around running for our lives, or we were staying put. This feels pretty weird actually, especially the part where we’re not rushing at top speed.”

“Was everybody around you a fugitive?”

“If they weren’t before, anybody who hung out with my parents for very long became one, yeah. Or they got tired and split,” she said.

“So pretty constantly on the go?”

Ellie nodded. “You?”

“About the same, growing up. On the run, or carefully hiding in a cave somewhere. There were some big families of native folks there that we would camp with, so sometimes we moved slower.”

Ian got a far away look in his eyes.

“There would be kids, you know?” Ian explained, “Other kids, I mean. I was a kid too, and dad let me be as innocent as I could be. But I was still trained to survive, trained to be a fighter. The communities there, the Phrox… they weren’t built for fighting, necessarily. It wasn’t in their nature. Community and family and nurturance was so much more important.”

“How old were you when you had to start protecting them?” Ellie asked, knowingly.

“Seven,” Ian said quickly.

“There was an incident, then,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t offer any more information, and she understood.

“I’m sure you did the best you could,” she said. “Did right by them.”

Ian slowly took in a big, quiet breath, and slowly let it out. He had an uncertain look on his face.

“Sound like that’s another thing you know something about,” Ian said. “Besides having two rock stars of justice as parents. You have somebody you protected?” 

“Not til I was older,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of other kids around when I was young. I mean, there were some here and there. Mom and dad would briefly help a community with something. But I never really interacted much until I was older. The winter I was 13.”

Ian once again felt safe to confide in, and the bus felt like a bubble of calm. Even as there was some bustle elsewhere on the coach, and a small child shrieked… in this moment, they didn’t need to be on alert. Ordinary life went on around them. Strangers calmly lived their lives in every direction, and the drone of the wheels against the road buffeted them from the rest of the world. 

“At that point,” Ellie continued, “I was needed to babysit occasionally. There was a period of time there where the Resistance had really grown. We were often camping with other groups. Right before the last crackdown. So dad trained me to protect others while I fought, and I started watching two or three other kids for a night here and there.”

Ian nodded, a knowing look on his face. 

“The duties of a sergeant in the army,” he said. “Got a platoon to run.”

“‘Watch our guard, think ahead, keep them safe,’” she said.

Ian gave a tiny half-grin and his eyes shone. Ellie whole heart sang, her whole chest vibrated, to have someone understand. With all the people who came and went, nobody knew what it was like to be the child of Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter. Except Ian.

Ellie had grabbed herself the window seat when they sat down, and now she watched the miles roll by as they got closer and closer to the airport Ian had chosen for their flight. She saw a great deal of green - more than she’d seen on her polluted, sprawling urban homeworld over most of her life. Hundreds of textures and shades of green sped by. There was also the sprawl of people - not quite so harsh and diseased looking as it was at home. It looked like organic settling here and there, rather than the oppressive, forced settlements of home. 

There were more restaurants of more different types than Ellie had any idea what to do with. So many shops, everywhere, so many places to buy things. What did people here do that they had money to buy all these items everywhere, and time and space to do something with it all?

 

 

The mileage sped by and soon they were both hungry again. 

“I’d rather stop somewhere to eat,” Ian offered. “We’ve got no idea how long this bag might have to last us, and under what circumstances.”

“We can’t be the only ones who need to eat,” Ellie wondered aloud. “Do we stop for meals? Maybe one of those drive-in places?”

“Drive-through,” Ian corrected. “And I don’t know.”

“Looking around,” Ellie mused, “I’m probably not the only one here short on underwear either.”

Ian looked her over.

“You don’t have  _ drive-through _ clothing stores, do you?” she asked.

“You know, now that you say that I’m surprised we don’t,” Ian said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not a half bad idea,” he said. “Clothes shopping takes too damn long.”

“You curse a great deal for a man brought up by Steve Rogers.”

Ian laughed. “Yours have that tic too?”

“Oh, mine would have definitely sat you down for several serious discussions by now.”

He chuckled. Then the smile faded a bit as his eyes wandered past her.

“What’s up?” Ellie said.

Ian paused for a moment, then in a distracted voice said, “Probably nothing.”

She looked up to realize they were taking the exit off the interstate, presumably for the break they were due for. Her hunger pangs intensified at the thought she would soon be eating, then she saw what gave Ian pause. Two police cruisers and a larger police vehicle were there, in the parking lot of the gas station that the bus seemed to be aiming for. 

They both sat trapped and watched as the bus pulled into the same parking lot.

“Probably just a coincidence?” Ellie said.

Ian narrowed his eyes in response.

The bus came to a stop, perfectly poised to receive proper protection from the cops.

Ian sat his chin in his hand, propped on the armrest they shared, in what looked like the tensest “relaxed look” possible. His eyes were flashing -- he was running scenarios same as she was. They craned to see what was going on without showing their faces too broadly.

One police car penned in the front of the bus. The other car and the larger vehicle - a sleek, black, all-terrain-type vehicle with tinted windows - was near the back end. Ellie had noticed an emergency exit back there. She had to believe somebody was holding a weapon trained on that back door. That tempting escape no doubt hid a trap.

When they were parked, the bus driver - a short, stocky woman with dark olive skin -  stood up.

“Please wait right here, we’ll handle this quick as we can,” she said. 

Ellie heard a giggle in front of her, and someone quickly shushed it. 

“What are the odds that other wanted people are on this bus?” Ellie asked quietly.

This time Ian responded by chewing a lip.

The driver spoke with the gathered police officers for a few minutes. Ellie couldn’t help but notice the difference between Confederation forces back home - who would barge in and take anything they wanted - and these forces… who at first glance, appeared to be putting on a show of fairness before taking anything they wanted.

Each one had a sidearm, and nobody had yet stepped out of the gleaming black vehicle in the back. A police van had just arrived, but occupants were already piling out of that… including two more officers and a mean looking dog.

Ellie’s heart raced, and she grabbed Ian’s hand. They both eyed the back door, and looked at each other, quietly deciding against it.

A cop entered the bus, stood at the front and spoke loudly, with a mean voice… authoritative and condescending.

“You all are going to get up and file out of the bus in an orderly fashion. Leave your belongings right where they are. You’ll be right back. You are not to reach into your pockets or make any sudden moves of any kind. Just stand up, now, and move quickly and carefully out of the bus.”

Everyone awkwardly began standing and trying to move. Once the first few people from the first few rows had slowly filed out, the police officer said more.

“This is a routine traffic stop. Nothing to be concerned about,” he said, as people passed. There was more shuffling as some older passengers needed assistance from their companions getting off.

“The officers outside will assist you in lining up in a orderly fashion,” the cop said. 

Ian and Ellie hung back as long as they could, but they couldn’t stall any longer. They worked their way out of their row and into the main aisle of the bus. Then they slowly made their way to the front.

“Sir,” the officer barked at someone Ellie couldn’t see. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Ellie flashed back to all the little behaviors Confederation forces would employ to terrify people…. to keep them in line and prove they had control. She worked to keep her heart rate down.

There was a small gray-haired woman who moved slowly just ahead of them. When she stumbled, Ellie caught her hand and helped her stay on her feet. Neither of them let go of the other, even once the old woman found her balance, so they stayed together and slowly made it down the aisle.

“Don’t dally, ma’am,” the officer barked. “Keep it moving.”

Ellie rubbed the woman’s back reassuringly as they went. Finally, it was their turn to walk past the cop at the front of the bus. Ellie wasn’t sure what she thought would happen. They didn’t seem to have any tracking devices on them, and the cop apparently didn’t recognize her or Ian.

They both helped the woman in front of them carefully navigate the stairs down, then they joined the others lined up near the side of the bus.

“Why the hell they doing this?” one voice said as they passed. “They ain’t never done shit like this before.”

A dog, and guns. Ellie saw no cover to run to for many yards in any direction. She wasn’t seeing an out yet. She caught Ian’s eye, and his agitated stillness suggested that he was reaching the same conclusion.

A cop in a different outfit came out from the margins with some folded sheets of paper. He began a slow, silent pace in front of them all, occasionally consulting the papers in front of him.

The sheets of paper had two photographs on them, with typed information under each. Ellie couldn’t see any other details from this far away, but she had something cold growing in the pit of her stomach.

Ian and Ellie milled around as nonchalantly as they could possibly manage to be. Once the cop with the papers had made one full sweep, he began pointing at certain people and telling them to get back on the bus.

The wind whipped at the pages in his hand, and Ellie distinctly saw Ian’s jawline in the muddy shadows on the forms.

She caught Ian’s eye and did her best to convey that nonverbally. He seemed to understand, but they both took another survey of the situation - nothing but the bus and asphalt in every direction. Lots of guns. And a dog. Maybe on a good day, Ian could give it a shot. But Ellie would never make it to cover.

Ellie watched Ian doublecheck everyone in their immediate vicinity, as though he was contemplating bringing this into a close melee fight. Could they get a hostage? Ellie immediately rejected the other passengers as an option; too much of a risk to their safety. A hostage would have to be one of the cops, and Ian would have to be the one to take him. The two closest were all pretty big, but she had no doubt Ian could best them. 

The crowd around them was dwindling. Then, the guy with the papers met Ellie’s eye. She willed herself to keep on her best innocent face.

He looked down at his paper, and looked back at her. Then he looked at Ian.

He was next to a group of about a dozen people, and he instructed them all to get back on the bus. He did the same for another group of five milling some few feet away. 

That left the crowd she and Ian were standing in.

He slowly dismissed the people closer to the end of the bus than they were.

And then, finally, he released the last few passengers who weren’t Ian and Ellie.

Ellie tried to look at Ian as though she had no idea why they’d be singled out.

“Is there a problem, officer?” she asked.

“Just remain standing there quietly, ma’am.”

Ellie nodded and stopped talking.

The officer turned to the one who had originally boarded the bus.

“Keep an eye on them,” he said.

The first one came closer and extended some effort looking authoritative. The second returned to his car and got on the radio.

Ellie was certain disappointment and fear crossed her face, but she shifted it into apparent discomfort, and stretched her right ankle a bit.

If they went quietly, Ellie thought, and ended up in one of the vehicles, they might be able to manage a way out of that. Ideally they’d lose some of these officers for the transport process. Escape might be easier that way.

The officer who’d had the photographs was heading back to them. He put the folded papers in a pocket and beckoned another cop to join them. It didn’t look good.

He put a hand on his gun, and stopped close to them.

“Sir. Ma’am. Step away from each other and put your hands up.”

Ellie glanced at Ian, and he nodded. She complied with the order.

“Officer, my sister and I have every wish to comply with you to the best of our ability,” Ian said. “Can you please let us know what’s going on? Why are we being detained?”

“Sir, everything will be explained but first you need to step away from the woman and put your hands up.”

“Absolutely,” Ian said. Ellie could hear the tension creeping into his voice. “We are complying.”

A male officer approached her, stepped behind her, and cuffed her wrists behind her back. Another cop was doing the same to Ian.

She worked hard to keep her panic under control at being taken into custody. At having restraints on.

“What have we done, sir?” Ellie asked plaintively. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand,” the main cop said, as officers patted them both down. “You need to comply with orders.”

Well, that accomplished nothing, Ellie thought.

They marched Ian and Ellie over to a police cruiser… not the all-terrain vehicle that she assumed they’d use. If it wasn’t for prisoner transport, why was it here? What were they transporting with it? She still hadn’t seen anyone get into or come out of it.

Ellie realized she had no idea where she was… no idea where they were about to be put in jail. She looked at the seal on the cop cars and discovered it was “Palmer Woods”. She made a mental note as they shoved her into the back of a car next to Ian. 

“Where are we supposed to take them?” One officer asked another near the car. The cops were sorting out what came next, and no one was in the front seat yet.

“They’re not taking us to jail here,” Ian whispered. “Maybe they’re handing us off. Some larger organization. SHIELD or FBI.”

“Enough whispering,” a new guy barked. He slid into the driver’s seat, and instructions guy got into the passenger seat.

“Don’t try one goddamn thing, you understand me?” instructions guy said angrily. He slammed his hand against the metal grate separating the back seat from the front, to make a startling noise. “I don’t know who you are or what fucking planet you’re from, but you’re not getting away with anything here.”

Ellie was flabbergasted, and turned to Ian.

“No alien tricks, sweetheart,” Ian said instructively.

Ellie raised an eyebrow at him, then sat back and waited.

Did he mean something by that joke?

A minute later, they were clear of the parking lot and the bus had disappeared behind them. None of the other cars were following them.

Ellie had a terrible idea. She wondered if it had occurred to Ian too. Was that the reason for his comment?

After a few minutes, they had moved into the outskirts of the little town, off the main drag and away from more heavily populated areas.

Ellie worried and waited. She hadn’t come up with any better ideas and thought maybe this would a decent time to try her ridiculous, terrible idea. Better to escape on the edge of town, right? Easier near the woods? Not in a crowd or open area?

She felt her brow ache with the crease she pressed into it, and looked at Ian. He had been watching the developing environment outside too. And this time, when he looked at her, he nodded gravely.

Ellie took a deep breath. She wished she’d been stupid enough to try this before, to have some practice to pull from this time.

She took another deep breath, made the most sudden, most gutteral grunt she could, and stopped.

“Settle down!” Instruction cop demanded.

“Oh God, it’s starting again!” Ellie cried out.

“Sweetheart, no! Not here!” Ian exclaimed.

“It’s not gonna ask me my permission!” Ellie protested. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

She rocked back and forth, made her breathing sound ragged, and grunted a few more times.

“Dammit!” Ian cried, as he pressed his back to the car door.

“Stop this nonsense now!” Instructor cop demanded.

Ian pleaded. “Sir, she can’t, I’m sorry, it’s the atmosphere on this planet, it’s just too hard to-”

Ellie screamed and began throwing her head around.

“Sweetheart,” Ian kept goading. “Just hang on, just hang on, don’t let it take you, don’t give in to it!”

She tried not to laugh at Ian’s overdramatics, and took several gulping breaths through her open mouth, praying that would dry her lips and teeth enough to do this safely.

Then Ellie flung her head forward and doubled over, grunting. 

She hoped that was enough to cover her. She then dug her chin into her chest hard, and nosed into her bra far enough to sweep her lips in. With pure luck, she captured the corner of the fire paper package.

She worked her lips with all her might to open the edge of the flap.  She felt her teeth catch several corners of several papers. She said a prayer to some faint memory of a God, took a deep breath, held it, and bit down hard.

Ellie had extracted a wad of paper, with the rest still contained in her bra (and, she pleaded with the universe, still dry). She wrapped the wad of paper with her tongue and mashed it together, worried that fibers would stick in her teeth if she chewed.

She kept praying, holding her breath, and raised her head. She then found that instruction cop had pulled his gun and had it pointed at her.

Ellie felt the slightest tingle against her tongue. 

So with wild eyes and a pounding heart, she held the wad between her front teeth, and blew on the cop as hard as she could.

A column of steamy fire streamed out of her mouth -- a stream just long enough to reach into the front seat and be visible to both cops.

The driver swerved in alarm, slammed the brakes and rolled off the side of the road onto gravel. Instruction cop screamed and scrabbled to get out of the car, dropping his gun.

The car skidded to a stop and both cops leapt out.

Okay, Ellie thought. Step one accomplished. They’re no longer going where they were going.

She spit the paper onto the floor of the car.

Ellie decided to rest, but still keep it weird. So she moaned and rocked in a dramatic, but low maintenance way.

“What now?” Ellie whispered to Ian.

“We’ve got to get them to open the door,” Ian said quietly, mouth screwed up in thought.

Ellie looked in the front seat. They’d left personal belongings in there.

_ Well, shit _ , she thought.  _ How well could I aim? _

She buckled forward again and nosed her way into the paper. It was harder to bite off more, with the closest corner gone. This time she got her dry tongue onto the top leaf of paper. It stuck, and she sucked the whole thing into her mouth. 

_ This is more, this is definitely more paper _ , she thought with alarm.

She stomped her feet and nuzzled her cheek against the grating.  _ Yes officers, that’s totally why I’m in this position. The cool temperature of this gross metal grate is so appealing in my feverish state. _

_ Heh, feverish. _

_ A tingle on the tongue, and move fast move fast move fast - _

Swoosh. 

“GOD DAMNIT, MY KENNY CHESNEY CDS!”

Driver cop honestly had both hands pressed to his head in anguish.

Her front gums were definitely sore, and there was at least a little damage to a cd case in the front seat. She couldn’t tell what else from here.

She spit the paper on the floor. This time, some part had enough heat left to smolder on a dry leaf on the back floorboard, sending smoke up.

That might have gotten their attention, or perhaps it was Ian going slack and slumping against his door, unmoving. At any rate, the cops were unnerved enough at that point to start panicking.

Driver cop stepped toward the car.

“Earnest, leave them exactly where they are!” Instruction cop warned in a voice full of fear.

“There tearing up the car, Len!”

“Better that than us!”

Earnest wasn’t ready to give up on the car. He came and slowly opened the door to Ellie’s side.

“Please,” she pleaded. “Please help!” She made the most pitiful face she could.

Ma’am… how… how do I do that?” Earnest asked.

Ellie trembled dramatically.

“Ma’am it’ll be alright,” Earnest said, “we just need you to get a hold of yourself.”

“My brother,” Ellie said. “Please help my brother, he’s not well.”

“Len, that one doesn’t look good either.”

“I don’t care,” Len replied.

“Will you- just check on him!” Earnest retorted.

Instruction cop Len opened the door, and Ian kept himself slack, tumbling to the ground at Len’s feet. 

He lay there still, on the ground, while Ellie hung her head.

“I’m calling this in,” Len said.

Earnest moved from his stooped position checking on Ellie to standing straight up, to talk to Len across the top of the car.

That was exactly what she needed.

In one swift move she spun her feet up and kicked him in the solar plexus.

At his grunt, Ellie heard Ian swing into action behind her.

She focused on her guy and leapt up to continue taking advantage of his lack of balance. One head butt and he had stumbled to the ground. One kick to the head and he was supine and groaning. One more kick and he was out.

Ellie looked across to Ian, who also seemed to have a motionless foe on the ground.

Ellie smiled.

“First one out of her cuffs, wins,” she said.

Ian squinted at her, then squared his shoulders dramatically and began working the cuffs somehow behind his back.

Ellie shimmied her hands down her sides as she slid down to the ground. She slipped the cuffs around her hips, pulled her legs through and she had the use of her cuffed hands in front of her.

From there, she dove for the cop’s belt, found the keys, and just as she slipped the key into the second cuff, she heard a snap on Ian’s side of the car.

He held up his separated hands - in cuffs that were now broken at the chain - and then she held up her free wrists.

“I win!” Ellie said. 

“You did not!” Ian replied. “Don’t be like that.”

“I certainly did!”

“I held my freed hands up first.”

“That doesn’t count!” Ellie said. “You’re still wearing your cuffs! I said OUT of the cuffs.” She headed around the car to bring him a key. He was closer to the woods anyway.

“My hands are free, silly, that’s what matters. The rest is irrelevant,” he said.

“I. Am out. Out of Cuffs. You. Are not,” Ellie retorted. “ _ Sweetheart _ .”

Ian gave a playful sneer and snatched at the key. Ellie handed it over and sighed.

“There’s more running coming now, isn’t there?” she asked.

“‘Fraid so,” Ian said. “Want a piggyback ride?”

“Save your strength,” she said. “I’m not that desperate.”

“I will concede though,” Ian said, as they started jogging for the nearby woods, “that your terrible hiding place came in handy.”

“That it did,” Ellie said. “How did they find us?”

Ian sighed. “Yeah, about that.”

Ellie grimaced. “There’s already an evil, fascist mastermind partway into the computer system here, isn’t there?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yup.”


	11. The Plan

About three long miles away from town, they found a partial clearing, with a shed and lean-to near them, and a trailer on the far end of the property. The lean-to covered a small motorcycle and a pile of boxes with tools strewn across the top.

Ian stopped and stared at it. Ellie stopped behind him. Her foot had hurt so much for so long, it felt like an open wound.

“Whats wrong?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” he whispered back, his head at a lower angle than usual. 

Ian crept up to the lean-to and poked around the tools. When he didn’t find whatever he wanted, he searched around on the ground. He found something, and picked it up. 

Then he quietly took the handlebars of the bike and started rolling it away.

They left the clearing and rolled along in silence for a few minutes, until they came to a road. They followed the road quietly a bit longer, until Ian decided it was time. He reached for a cap in the engine and pulled it off. Then he revealed he had picked up a stray piece of wire. He looked like he was hotwiring the bike.

“Wait,” Ellie said, a knot growing in her stomach. She was starting to put the pieces together.

“What?” Ian said. “We need to move.”

“This guy is gonna lose his bike in this deal,” Ellie sad. “Isn’t that what gave you pause?”

“Well, yeah,” Ian said. “It’s a shitty thing to do but if it saves our lives-”

“This isn’t the way to play it.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Ellie? Clem and Rufus back there are probably awake by now, and they’re gonna go get somebody that we can’t get away from so easily.”

“How did they find us in the first place?”

“Yeah, so, Zola’s already got one eye in the grid. That makes it even more important that we…”

He trailed off, looking at her set jaw. 

“Dammit,” Ian whispered. Then he sighed. “Alright. Let’s try it your way.”

“What makes you think you know what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“It’s the ridiculously foolhardy Rogers special,” Ian said. “You think I haven’t hatched a few of those myself?”

“Fair. Let’s see, I need access to send Steve a message.”

“Yeah, I’ve got the gist of this.”

“Do you think the message will reach him?”

“I do, yeah,” Ian said.

They walked the bike back to shed near the trailer.

Ellie walked up to the front door of the trailer, and knocked.

A brown-skinned guy in a flannel shirt quickly came to the door, startled to see Ian moving his bike.

“Now, wait just a goddamn-”

He started angry, but the words just poured out of Ellie.

“Sir, my name is Eleanor, and we were going to hotwire your bike and we decided against it, I’m so sorry. You have every right to be angry. It was a terrible and mean idea and that’s not who we are. I’m so sorry to mess with your property like that. We’re in a…”

She realized that he stood there stunned in confusion. Ellie decided on honesty.

“We’re in a terrifying and dangerous situation and we’d much rather stop bothering you. And your belongings. We’re putting your bike back. But if you don’t mind, if you could please, please do us - do me - just one favor. It would make a world of difference.”

He stared at her with a furrowed brow. Just then Ian arrived behind her.

“Here’s the cap,” Ian said. “It’s dark out, I don’t want to mess up your bike getting it back on.”

Ellie watched Ian hand him the part. The man took it, and his face softened.

“What’s the favor?” he asked noncommittally.

“Could we please use your internet connection to send an email to Captain America?” Ian asked.

The guy blinked. And his jaw fell open. He sighed, repositioned himself, and then put a hand on his hip, all in an apparent attempt to understand what the hell was going on.

Ellie and Ian stood there, quiet and earnest.

The guy turned around and walked away. But he didn’t close the door. Ellie took that as a good sign.

When he returned, he’d brought them a small tablet. He handed it over silently, folded his arms and waited there with a stern face. 

“No underhanded shit,” he said.

“That’s a reasonable request,” Ian said with a nod.

“Does all this mean that you know his address?” Ellie asked Ian.

“I do, give it here.”

Ian took the tablet and tapped on it for what might have been a full minute, and then handed it back to her.

Ellie swallowed, and looked at the empty space under a header of information that included Steve’s name. 

And she began to type.

 

_ “Steve, this is Ellie. Ian is with me too. I want to remind you of the conversation we had at the hospital. Thank you for your concern about my view of the stars.  _

_ I’m very proud to be a connecting link between the Steve and Sharon of my world, to carry them both with me. I know you and Sharon have done your best to love this world the way my parents loved mine. I feel this seals our destiny, together, as people of goodwill who are important to one another. _

_ You should know Ian and I are safe and unharmed. _

_ We’re in Palmer Woods. We know we’re wanted by the authorities, and we’re turning ourselves in. It’s the right thing to do. I just wanted you to know. _

_ Is there anything you want me to tell your friend Barnes? _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Ellie” _

 

She swallowed again, and looked at Ian. His jaw was set too, but there was fear and anger written across his face.

“Damned irresponsible,” she said.

“Highly ill-advised,” he said.

She hit send. 

“Thank you,” Ellie said to the man, as Ian took the tablet back from her and started tapping it. “Thank you very much.”

“That’s… that’s all you need?” he said gruffly. “You... got a place to stay and all?”

“We’re alright,” Ian said, handing him the tablet, “very sorry to bother you. That’s a really sweet bike.”

They turned around and stepped off the man’s concrete porch.

“Where to now?” Ian asked, as they walked to the road.

“I’m going to guess they’ll find us pretty soon,” she said.

“Yup.”

Ellie felt more peaceful than she’d felt since she got to this place.

“How about that way?” Ellie said. She pointed toward town.

Ian held up a hand to invite her down the road. They walked down the center of the asphalt, their dark path punctuated by occasional pools of yellow street light. 

“My Bucky would have gotten a kick out of that email,” Ian chuckled. “It’ll probably piss this one off.”

“We’ll be quite the prize for Zola,” Ellie replied.

“His son from another dimension, along with possibly the only person both willing and able to disrupt his plan for world domination? Yes. I think that might get his attention.”

“We tried taking Zola’s fortress in my world. We tried breaking his stranglehold. And we failed, miserably.”

“We didn’t fail. You were right about that, that day,” Ian said, quoting Ellie’s words back to her. “‘We didn’t fail. It matters that we fought. We tried.’”

Sirens began to fill the air from a source nearby.

“Wanna try again, here?” Ellie asked him with a smile.

“Second try’s the charm,” Ian said. “Do you have… any kind of actual plan past getting ourselves captured?”

“Not really, no.”

“Oh, good.”

Ellie nodded. “You?”

He shook his head with a friendly frown. “This is your bright idea, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” she said.

The night before them exploded into blue and red light. Without thinking, Ellie reached out a hand and grabbed Ian’s.

Three police cars lunged at them, lights and sirens blaring. Two screeched to a stop in front of them, and one blew past to surround them from behind. Seconds later, a fourth vehicle skidded to a halt behind the wall of lights.

They kept their hands clasped, but raised them.

The sirens stopped, but the flashing lights continued.

The cops all leapt out of their cars, pulled their weapons, pointed them at Ian and Ellie, and held positions near their cars. Ellie had to remind herself that they probably wouldn’t die right here. They were wanted alive.

They stood still, and waited. Ellie wasn’t sure in the blinding light, but she thought she saw the same sleek black vehicle behind the squad cars.

Soon, a figure in a business suit began making his way past the phalanx of cops. He was a silhouette at first, and then he formed into a familiar figure.

Bucky sauntered over to them, glaring at their clasped hands. He then gave Ian a cold appraising look, and a nod, and sneered at Ellie.

“Cute email,” he said. His voice was calm and cold. “Explain to me why these police officers won’t discover you both violently resisting arrest on this road here. With dire consequences.”

“Just luck, I guess,” Ellie said.

Bucky sucked the inside of his cheek at her.

“Follow me,” he said.

He headed back toward the squad cars, motioning to the cops to put down their weapons. They all complied warily, and the three of them walked past the cars with lights flashing. 

When they got past the bright lights, and Ellie’s eyes adjusted, the same sleek all-terrain vehicle was indeed waiting for them. 

Bucky opened the back door and held it open for the two of them. Ellie and Ian stepped in, and Bucky followed suit.

They each had a comfortable seat mounted on a side wall of the vehicle.There were cabinets in corners that Ellie suspected held alcohol and other items to assist with entertainment. It was a pleasure vehicle, it seemed.

Bucky sat with a smug, slanted ease, legs crossed and manicured hands folded across his lap. He stared at Ian and Ellie, while they both sat quietly for a few minutes.

“No cuffs?” Ian asked.

“I realize your father pampers and props you up, Ian,” Bucky said. “But you need to disabuse yourself of the notion that you can stand toe-to-toe with a supersoldier.”

Ellie watched an angry smile crack through Ian’s composure. 

“‘Kay,” Ian said.

“Honestly,” Bucky said, “I’m still unclear why you think your life is worth anything. That message you sent was a pathetic pile of teenage drama.”

“If Zola wanted me dead, you’d have tried it by now,” Ellie said. “All you’ve wanted to do was capture me. You’ve got Steve and Sharon snowed with all this, but even they have their limits. Anything happens to either one of us? I can’t imagine they’d still sign off on all this.”

“And you think that matters?”

“In this dimension?” Ellie replied. “Where there’s a store selling Cap merch on most street corners? Yeah. I do.”

Bucky kept being smug, and Ellie lost all interest at looking at his face at all. Why were powerful men like this? Why were most men like this?

“So your plan here is what, actually?” Bucky asked.

“Easy,” Ellie said. “Take us to Zola. And we won’t cause trouble.”

“Trouble?” Bucky laughed. “You really have no comprehension of what’s going on.” He shook his head. “Fine. Sure. I’ll frogmarch you to Zola. That’ll go well for you. You can give him a patented Rogers motivational speech and he’ll change his ways.”

Ian interjected. “Bucky, why are you doing this?”

“You’re a couple of fools, just like your dad,” Bucky spit out. “Thinking there’s some great grand compassionate plan to help everyone at the heart of everything. Zola, Doom, the president, any world leader, they’re all the same. Skimming off the top, keeping people in line.”

“And what part of any of this falls in line with all the things you and my dad stand for?” Ian demanded. “What are you up to here, Bucky?”

“This is about protection!” Bucky lost his temper and got heated. “I’ve dedicated my life to protecting this country, and this setup will do it.” 

He took in a few breaths, and his tone calmed.

“People get rich off it all, no matter what,” Bucky said. “We might as well stop pretending our way of doing things is any more virtuous than anyone else’s, anywhere under the sun. Run it peacefully. Have somebody at the top that isn’t cruel, but is still practical, still realistic. Give everybody, no matter their station, a quiet and peaceful life doing whatever it is they’re destined to do. Everything runs smoother that way.”

“And if you get rich and powerful in the process…” Ellie asked.

Bucky suavely threw up his hands and shrugged, with a smile. 

“Must be my destiny,” he said.

Ellie’s’s heart felt raw at the thought that this was Steve’s best friend. She looked at Ian, and the hurt looked more personal on his face.

“Latveria,” she said.

“Sorry?” Bucky cocked his head as though he misheard.

“I don’t want just any... interface port that takes me to Zola,” Ellie said. “You take us to where he’s... stationed, or rooted, or plugged in, or whatever its called in his current state. Which unless I miss my guess, is in Latveria.”

“You’re not in an any position to demand anything,” Bucky said. “But lucky for you, you’re needed there. So that’s where you’re being taken.”

“You ever been dead?” Ian asked, out of nowhere.

“What?” Bucky asked angrily.

“Dead. How many times have you been dead, Uncle Bucky? I’m trying to find the guy I know in this rich pile of trash in front of me.”

Bucky leveled a disdainful look at Ian, and held it. It broke Ellie’s heart to see that kind of coldness directed at Ian, who reminded her so much of her father, who had been so warm to her. She could only imagine how it felt to Ian, and it made her furious.

“Well,” Bucky said, “If we’re going to be honest, I don’t even plan to die the once. If I play my cards right, that requirement will be waived.” He smiled a joyless smile.

“You once told me dying so often kept you young,” Ian said wistfully.

“That... is a stupid thing to say,” Bucky replied.

Ellie felt something shift inside of her. She had been working so hard not to be disoriented by the familiar faces, the common names, the relationships that existed without her. But suddenly, the connective tissue came into view. 

These people, these stories… they somehow weren’t foreign to her. They originated from a whole different planet, in a different solar system, but they were all around her. They had pulled her in. On a molecular level, this dimension had allowed her to enter when there was no reason she should belong here. Ian was her friend. And these ghosts and mirrors of his own life that he had inherited… they somehow belonged to her too. His displacement was hers, and they’d fight this. She’d fight it.

This was somehow her fight too, intimately.

Even across an unimaginable expanse, even with the foreignness, she was rooted here. This places was hers now, too. She could feel it. 

And this place was hers to fix… maybe even as much as it was Ian’s.

It was up to her to find a way. That’s why she was here.

  
  
  


Ten minutes later, their creepy car ride had become a creepy helicopter ride, which finally turned into a creepy private jet flight.

Bucky was so sure of his control over the situation that Ian and Ellie traveled freely, with no restrictions. The level of ease and comfort in the travel disturbed Ellie -- nothing this extravagant could come without hurting others, not on her planet, and she was beginning to suspect whether this place was really so different. 

The helicopter’s roar kept them from sitting in silence with Bucky, but the jet had a luxurious quiet about it. The front half of the cabin was populated with green plush swivel bucket seats and padded benches, with heavy green wallpaper. The back half was lined with cushioned reclining chairs along each wall. 

Ellie had never sat quietly next to someone that made her skin crawl. Her life had been one of action and flight… fighting and fleeing and herding and hiding and following and attacking. There wasn’t much sitting, and when there was, it was with fellow Resistance members. 

All her life it had been an emergency to be in the presence of such evil. Here she was, sitting and waiting while evil offered her a glass of wine.

Ellie shook her head in refusal.

“You sure?” Bucky asked, with a terrifying undertone of friendliness. “Might make the next few hours easier to take.”

Ellie stared at him coldly.

He nodded an acknowledgement of her answer, working his jaw as though he had something to say. But he kept quiet this time.

Ellie sat on one of the swivel chairs that jutted out from the wall. She could see cold twinkling lights outside the window. Next to her was a table with wine and food, and Bucky sat across the table from her, his chair swiveled to face Ian on the other side of the cabin. Ian sat on a long plush bench, arms stretched defiantly across the back of the bench. From where Ellie sat, he was framed in the darkness of the night sky behind him. 

She flashed on their past failed mission: the two of them sailing through the air of her homeworld, fleeing from Hydra operatives intent on destroying them. She supposed this situation bore only minor differences from that one. Flying through the air with someone intent on destroying them, one way or another.

Maybe they’d just kill her, once their project was over. Maybe they had some sort of brainwashing in mind for Ian. Make him into their Captain Hydra, like Ian’s doppleganger back home had been. Twist this kind man into something more befitting Zola’s plans. The idea chilled her, and she worried on his behalf.

She was pretty sure their plans called for her death, though, after whatever task she was needed for.

Ellie realized that death itself didn’t scare her. She feared letting this world down, not completing the mission. There was a part of her that desperately wanted her parents to know that she was beginning to truly earn the death wishes placed upon her all her life. Now she wasn’t just an object for evil to eliminate because of her parents’ shadow; through her own hard work, she was an obstacle to evil’s plans.

“Why do you want to live forever?” Ellie asked Bucky.

Bucky frowned. “Are you in some hurry to die?”

Ellie shrugged. “It just sounds exhausting, living forever. Never dying. I mean, I don’t particularly want to go now, or even soon. But at this rate it feels like the only rest I’m gonna find, so at some point…”

“Neither one of you would exist if it weren’t for your father chasing immortality, in every dimension,” Bucky offered.

“That’s not true,” Ian said. “Dad only ever wanted to help people. The crazy long life was a side effect.”

“We’re soldiers,” Bucky said, getting himself another drink. “Your father and I. That’s our whole goal, survive. Last longer than the other guy. And there’s always another guy.”

“You haven’t been a active soldier for a long time now,” Ellie said, looking him up and down.

Bucky got that ice in his glare again. 

“I was a soldier before I had the chance to want much of anything else, kid. The world needed saving. So I handed myself over and I fought. I commanded men to their deaths. When that was done, I keep handing myself over: to serums and experiments, to leading more men, to killing more men, to doing more to protect this country. Just like your father has always done. Handing ourselves over to shitstain operations like different flavors of cannon fodder.”

He leaned back and took a sip of his glass of wine.

“Your father and I are the same kind of man. Finally, over the years, your dad has found some realism to temper his idealism.”

“Yeah, that’s the central puzzle piece that just doesn’t fit here,” Ian mused. “The rest of this shitshow just follows from that.”

Bucky leaned back, closed his eyes and sighed. 

He then sat his emptied glass of wine down on the table and stood up.

“It’s late, and we’ve still got hours of flying ahead of us,” he said. “The seats in the back recline back to beds. Feel free to rest.”

With that, he left them and went through a door in the far back of the jet. Some more private quarters, Ellie imagined.

She looked to Ian, who cocked his eyebrow at her and gave a tired, lopsided smile. She got up, patted his knee for comfort, and headed back to settle into one of the bed chairs. She’d wait for the morning with her eyes closed.


	12. The Procedure

The forgotten window at her head poured in sunlight, but it wasn’t until the runway screeched below them that Ellie really came to full consciousness. She looked over to the closest chair to find Ian waking up too.

“Good, you’re up,” Bucky said, appearing out of the back door, looking more refreshed than Ellie felt. He had his phone out, and began talking to someone before Ellie or Ian could respond.

Ellie shifted the chair so her feet could reach the floor, and she quickly began the short version of the stretches that gave her a bit more flexibility with a bit less pain throughout the rest of her day.

Ellie looked outside, and found the runway was halfway up a mountain, with a huge, castle-like building perched at the top. Below was spread a town made of many nearly identical red sloped roofs. 

The town was nearly cleaved in half by a line of debris and damaged buildings.

And then all those surroundings disappeared, as the runway took them underground. The plane slowly found its place in a cave of a hangar.

“A place of beauty and order,” Bucky said as he pocketed his phone.

The door of the plane swung open, and Bucky deplaned, leaving Ian and Ellie to follow.

Ellie took the few stairs out of the plane carefully, feeling Ian right behind her. A small crowd of guards in dark, plain uniforms soon closed in and encouraged them to continue to follow Bucky.

Ellie’s parents had trained her to be aware of her surroundings, to map out any location, and keep that map sharp in her mind… finding exits and escape routes easily without getting disoriented. But as they walked deeper into the mountains, and their surroundings rolled past, the labyrinthine hybrid of sophisticated technology and cave walls disoriented her. Her brain just wasn’t finding escape routes.

Any way she got out of this place, she would need someone’s help.

Various guards and personnel in tac gear passed by in a blur, and then Ellie and her party were in a stone and steel elevator, traveling further. 

And when the elevator door opened again, Ellie gasped, because she was in an honest-to-God evil scientist lab in an honest to God castle.

Stone walls penned in a sprawling mass of gleaming, quaking metal tubes and disturbing tanks. This was nothing like Tony’s tempting lab. This was a frightening mess of chattering machines built to do God knows what. A giant furnace on the far wall sent an eerie blue glow through the room, and pumped searing power into the clanging, writhing tangle of machine. 

Ellie certainly had no desire to get closer to any of it.

The first figure she saw stood at a control panel near the center of the room. They filled the cavernous space with their presence, even with their back turned toward Ellie. A heavy, hooded cape of green brocade fell from their broad shoulders. 

One of the neon furry creatures lurked close to Ellie and Ian.

“Do not touch them,” a nearby nasal voice spit at the creature. “I need her fully awake. And I have reinforcements for the boy.”

The speaker needed no introduction. Their apparatus was new -- a looming, anthropomorphized robot with a box for a head. The torso sported a large viewscreen, which was currently displaying the grinning face of Arnim Zola.

“I brought the children, as you requested,” Bucky said to both of them.

“It was not a request,” intoned the figure in green. He spun around and his face was completely hidden behind a metal mask. “Do not forget your place here,” he growled.

“My place, Emperor Doom, is as the highest ranking American in this whole gig,” Bucky retorted. “Let’s not forget what’s mine out of this deal.”

“Enough,” Zola cried. “Yes, yes, the girl’s here, splendid.” The robot carrying Zola showed frightening agility as it approached Ian and leered. “Just as importantly, my son and heir is here.”

“I’m not your son, you sad little freak,” Ian said with disgust. “You have even less claim over me than the sack of shit that threw my genes together in a test tube.”

“You are a Zola,” the man in the robot said, with a pride that set Ellie’s teeth on edge. “In any dimension, I am a giant mind. A God able to create life at will.”

“Eat me,” Ian replied.

Doom swept toward Ellie as he railed at Zola. “Take control of your swollen ego and get on with your part, Zola.”

Doom clenched her arm in his hand. Ian started toward her, and out of nowhere, the furry creature struck him in the head and sent him sailing across the stone floor. Ellie fought down panic.

“You will not manhandle my heir!” Zola cried.

“He’s in the way!” Doom yelled. “We must act quickly. I didn’t disrupt our original schedule and recreate an entire new cycle cresting today, just to have your theatrics hinder us.”

“Dear God,” Bucky interjected, “Do you two ever not bicker like schoolchildren?”

Doom resumed dragging Ellie by her arm across the lab. She considered assessing his strengths and weaknesses, devising a plan, fighting back, looking for escape. All her usual survival skills. All the ways she stayed alive this long. 

But that wasn’t why she was here. Escape wasn’t the plan.

The next thing Ellie knew, one wrist and then another was strapped to a giant mechanism near the middle of the room - a pile of incomprehensible gadgetry. Soon there was a strap around her waist as well, and the machine noise picked up drastically.

She was pinned to a giant mysterious machine and she couldn’t get away. 

The terror in her seemed to be both absolute and pure, on the one hand, and muffled and contained in the other. It was as though a single room inside of her were filled to bursting with enough sirens and lights to stop her heart, if the door to that room weren’t closed.

_ I guess I’m not going to get an explanation of the procedure before we start _ , she thought.

She looked over at Ian, who was coming to consciousness again. Between Zola’s metal leg supports, she saw him find her and reach out his hand in her direction, fearful for her and clearly aching to help.

Ellie dug down, and gave him her most reassuring nod.

Ian recoiled from Zola as Doom yelled something. The machine noise was deafening now, and Ellie fought to keep her breathing steady.

_ Steady, solid, _ she heard her dad say.  _ Oxygen is a powerful tool. Fear is fine, but don’t let it steal your breath. _

She breathed, and kept breathing. Slow, solid, steady. She touched her thumb to her ring.

Something flashed above her head, and she looked up to see what it was.

A protrusion in the machine above pointed directly at her, and bright blue sparks were gathering around it. The smell of lightning filled the air. 

Ellie centered herself, closed her eyes, and breathed. 

And then the shock of blue power struck from above, crackling through her whole self. Though she had been expecting it, there was nothing she could have done to prepare. Her body threatened to shatter and fly away, somehow now molten in the surge of strange power. She didn’t know whether her eyes were open or closed. Every part of her body was on fire… except her foot, which felt like a block of ice. 

The intensity sunk her into some other space, some other location. With wrists and waist still bound, she knew somehow that she wasn’t still in the lab. 

 

 

The pain slowly drained out of her, as she struggled to understand where she was, and how she had traveled. There were no visual cues, no sounds. There was only a feeling in her gut, like she had been in this nothingness before. 

She realized… she was traveling in the nebulous space between dimensions... in between worlds and times and choices. Strange, unseen breezes stirred through her thoughts, and she felt certain that she was being caressed by the very essence of the ties that bind reality together, swirling in the air like confetti around and through her.

This wasn’t a place for mortals to be. It was all too big and too stifling, and she had no business being in between, trying to reach out with her own small brain to comprehend something incomprehensible. She was humbled, and felt lost, roiling among universal powers. 

She wondered where she would go if she followed this desire to simply be flung away forever… and yet, something held her back.

The thought rattled through her that maybe imagination was pretty powerful here. She thought that she should be quite careful what she thought of. So she carefully reached through her own empty mind to recall some goal, some mission… what had been important to her not so long ago? 

She had help then, something was helping. What helped?

She felt something.

Her foot…  she could feel her foot. 

She had no particular sensation of the rest of her body, but her foot still held the memory of a bolt of power shattering there… as though the power fragmented too far through the web of metal and memories and pain. Her foot was acting like a strange anchor - slowing her down, holding her back - so she concentrated on it with all of her might. 

She felt her wit and her senses blink back into place. She felt her own bodily integrity, her own flesh… not gone, not wiped away, not taken. The old patterns of pain in her foot sang like a familiar melody, reminding her of herself, of her latest world, her friend Ian, her new brother…

Something rattled back together. She was still between worlds, still in a liminal space… but she wasn’t thinned out like aether. She wasn’t a cloud of gas. She was her. She was Ellie, and she was her bum foot, and she was her hair that needed to be washed. And all the rest of her was there, and intact.

  
  


 

Soon her strange, liminal surroundings blinked away, and she had solid ground underneath her… or, what looked like solid ground. 

She stood on desolate rock, no life immediately around her, or under her feet. There was a thick smoke in every direction and she couldn’t see her surroundings. But she could hear loud crashes, and screaming.

She didn’t trust it. It didn’t feel real.

It was supposed to feel real, she imagined. But her skin prickled in a strange way. Her hearing told her something was off. The ground… it didn’t push back against her bum foot the way ground really does.

The screaming intensified, and then quickly died down as the crashes got larger and louder, and Ellie began to make out the sounds of weapons firing -- both percussive and electronic.  

A wind swept the smoke away all at once, revealing a scene of devastation.

Ian was dead at her feet, crumpled and bloody. Buildings crumbled all around as massive ships hung in the air firing at people below. Weapons and staked positions and established air missile launchers were nearby, some destroyed and in pieces. Small, one-person aircraft lay around too, abandoned; as far as she could tell, they had all been decimated by the huge hostile ships in the air.

She saw Steve, and Sharon, dead in the rubble. She saw Natasha - her new friend Natasha - laying motionless, eyes vacant. This world’s Tony and Sam and many more people she didn’t recognize, all dead.

The nearest ship stopped firing on a building nearby, and spun in place. The firing mechanism - a round turret hanging down from the hovering ship - swung toward her, and the ship advanced.

She knew she was supposed to be devastated by this scene. And it hurt her to see it. 

But she’d just lived through an apocalypse, last week. She’d watched her loved ones, just like this. She had already been devastated, a part of her heart already ripped away.

This scene didn’t make her frantic or afraid. It made her angry.

The people she loved had died - had really died - fighting for what they believed in. Whatever this event was, it was a lie. 

She spotted Steve’s shield close by. She reached it just as she heard the the advancing ship open fire. 

She swung the shield into place and the bolt hit, and she expected to be dead. Again.

The bolt faded, and the air cleared, and she was still there. But she now held in her hands two halves of a shield. That gone too, again.

_ Ignore the noise, Ellie.  _ Her mother’s voice guided her. _ Don’t let it rattle you. Keep a clear head, honey, and that’s half the battle won right there _ .

She looked around, and saw a ground-to-air missile launcher seemingly still intact about 20 yards away.

She tore after it, the two sides of the shield still on her arm. If it could still give any protection at all, she’d keep hold of it. 

She saw stragglers in the distance, scrabbling for safety. Ellie didn’t know yet if they were real. But she didn’t have time to ask. Either way, she might pull fire away from them if she kept at her task.

She reached the controls for the missile launcher right as the ship fired another bolt close enough for her to feel the vibrations rattle deep in her chest. She dropped the shield to reach the controls, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, something she hadn’t noticed in her previous position. 

Right behind her initial landing point, the ground simply stopped existing. There was nothing there. Had she retreated from that first, terrifying scene, she would have fallen into something. Or perhaps into nothing. 

She fired, and hit the ship, directly on its closest cannon. The cannon bloomed in a puff of smoke, and as Ellie planned her next hit, she expected to see metallic wreckage behind. 

Instead, her blast left a strange hole… empty, with a crack down the center. For an instant, surreal blue light poured through, and Ellie thought it might envelope the ship. Instead, the light seemed to swallow itself, and retreat from her. 

With an odd open gap in place of one of its cannons, the ship seemed to stabilize, and spin around to confront her with another cannon.

And as the ship advanced on her again, the ground that had just given the appearance of solidity behind her began collapsing, falling away. She felt the rumble under her feet and nearly dropped along with the earth underneath her as it crumbled into nothingness. But she caught traction on the edge of still solid earth just in time, and kept going.

She ran toward the ship’s position as fast as she could, launching herself clumsily over bodies and building wreckage. She crossed directly underneath the ship, temporarily sending its remaining cannons into a spinning frenzy trying to locate her.  

She made a hard turn in her trajectory while she was underneath, just in case it confused the intelligence stalking her. She ran for the wreckage of a nearby gutted building, worried she’d bring fire on somebody else if she took shelter in a more intact structure.

In the gutted building, she found a hand-held grenade launcher, near the body of a person in uniform. She picked it up, swung around fast, and tested the trigger.

She shot the nearest cannon off of the ship again, and watched as the same phenomenon happened - the blue light shone through a crack, for a longer period this time, but then slowly got swallowed up by the rest of the ship. 

It was as though she were disrupting the reality of the ship, in some small way, when she fired back. 

She came to the conclusion that this place was an illusion of Zola’s and Doom’s, some separate environment. She had no idea what their game was, but it was clear that they wanted her to fall out of this world… preferably with the intention to run away, to escape. And though she didn’t understand the mechanism, Ellie had no doubt her actions here would somehow alter reality in the dimension she was trying to call home now. 

She just didn’t know how to create the impact that she wanted.

This time, though, she knew what the rumble behind her meant, and bolted away from the falling ground behind her before losing her footing.

She ran for another sacked building, noticing as two more ships spotted her and closed in.

She saw no reinforcements, no communication channels available. She had run past the bodies of all the loved ones she had left. And she didn’t know how many more times the weapons she could reach would actually work here.

But Ellie wouldn’t give up.

The rupture of the ships was the key, she was sure of it. She’d keep doing that. And she’d deny them - the powers that be - she’d deny them the chance to rip the ground out from under her, for as long as she could.

She spotted just what she needed. And she ran for it, full force, pain shocking her leg.

It looked so far away, but she kept running, kept pounding the strange earth.  Heart still banging, blood still racing, thoughts still centered.

Whatever else happened, she was a Rogers. She had work to do. 

It was the tiniest one-person ship possible. It was practically a floor tile with a handle. But its readings said it had some meager fuel left, and when she punched the ignition, most of its thrusters fired.

She turned on everything it had and headed for the ship she’d shot before.

Her tiny craft chugged and lurched upward, seemingly as tired as Ellie was, but determined to get her where she wanted to go. 

What she wanted was to get her hands on that ship. She’d grab it, or die trying.

The cannon-toting ship was large enough that evasive action for what amounted to a gnat buzzing around it wasn’t a possibility. It did start spinning its central turret of cannons around, though, as quickly as it could.

As Ellie came close, the turret stopped and aimed straight for her. 

She heard whirring and whining as she closed in on the ship. And as the tiny craft lurched her toward the closest cannon - already preparing to spit its contents out toward her - she leapt and caught the barrel, wrapping her single, fragile piece of flesh around the monstrous, venomous, surreal entity.

And where she touched it, the metal began to split, and spilled out a bright blue light.

Whatever Doom and Zola’s plan was for her, to use her actions for their ends... this wasn’t it.

The sound was deafening, as she clung to a disintegrating hunk of metal hundred of yards up above a ground that magically followed the whims of unseen despots.

It didn’t matter that her ears were too full and it didn’t matter that her training fought in vain to understand the environment and it didn’t matter that her skin seared and sealed with alien metal in midair in the middle of nowhere.

She wouldn’t give up. This was too important.

The ship itself seemed to shrink and fold inward… not so much collapsing the way metal should, but dissolving at the edges like ice in warm water. Metal dissolved into light, which dissolved into thin air. She closed her eyes, and held on tight.

And when the piece in her hands was gone, and the noise stopped, she didn’t fall. 

And she didn’t hurt.

  
  
  


Ellie untensed. And breathed. And worked again to understand what reality existed around her. 

She stretched her legs and effortlessly found a soft surface below her feet to stand on. It was dark all around her, but in a rather pleasant way… like a warm, soft inviting bed, when it was safe to sleep. The dark was punctuated with gentle shafts of sideways light, as though from another room.

She saw no other features or furnishings. The air felt neither warm nor cold.

She wondered at first if her eardrums had burst from all the noise. But when she took another deep breath, and let it out, she heard the air quietly and gently leave her lungs.

She was alert, and strangely calm.

She realized then that someone stood near her shoulder, looking in the opposite direction from where her own gaze fell. The person was so deeply familiar in stance and form that she instinctually and instantly trusted them.

She turned toward him, to confirm her instinct.

Steve Rogers stood next to her. Which Steve, she wasn’t sure. One of the young, strong Steves.

“I’m so tired,” Steve whispered to no one. “I’ve never been this tired.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie answered.

Steve then seemed to notice she was there. He was in a haze, looking groggy and hesitant. He looked hazy, in fact, as though he wasn’t entirely there.

But he met her eyes, and she saw in him everything she’d ever seen in her dad, and more - his bravery, his handsomeness, his kindness, his fierce heart, his burdens. He carried so many people’s dreams willingly, gladly. How heavy that must have been. He always inspired her. She always dearly loved him. But how much did she really ever know about his sadness? His doubts?

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he said, shame in his voice. “It’s… it’s my whole life, on a loop. Randomly. Constantly fighting. No rest. I don’t even know how long this has gone on.”

“That sounds so difficult,” she said sadly, fighting back tears. 

“Dr. Erskine warned me, don’t change anything,” Steve mumbled. “I haven’t. But I worry. That I might.”

_ This is it _ , she thought.  _ Here’s the knot. Can we untie it? _

“Steve,” Ellie said.

He looked her way, and searched her eyes for an answer to his pain.

“Some things can’t be erased,” Ellie said. “Once they’ve happened. This is important.”

He leaned in immediately when she said that, brow furrowed in concentration.

“Sometimes the damage is done,” she continued. “We can’t change that. We don’t have that power. We can only move on.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Steve pleaded.

“We can love, and protect and fight,” she said. “We can give everything we’ve got... to make the present moment the kindest and most just that it can be. You taught me that-”

“If I had just known what was going to happen then…” Steve said. “But now I do-”

“Sometimes people use our best choices against us,” she said.

“The Soviets can’t have him.” Steve stared with hard eyes into the distance.

“Some decisions are never in our hands. Even when it looks like they are.” She wasn’t clear on the details, so she desperately spoke from her heart.

“Maybe this is why I have this chance,” he pleaded. “So I can fix this.”

“This isn’t why you’re here, Steve. It wasn’t a mistake. It was just… evil. We’re not responsible for somebody else’s choices.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Steve said with a shudder.

Ellie couldn’t hold back a sob at his statement.

“I know,” she said. 

He looked at her, tears on his face. She wrapped her arms around him, and they both cried. Ellie cried her own tears for him, for her dad, on Steve’s shoulder. She wondered if she’d ever stop. She clutched him tight and cried. He let her, and wept his own quiet tears.

Slowly Ellie regained some composure. And she searched for more words.

“Wholeness,” she said, “it doesn’t come from… from not being broken.”

Steve pulled back to look her in the eye. 

“It comes from building something new,” she said.

Steve pursed his lips in pain.

“When it’s over and we’ve done our best,” Ellie continued. “We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to keep building. We’re Rogers, that’s what we do.”

Steve looked her in the eye, wary.

“Please keep moving forward,” Ellie said. “Whatever it takes. There’s people that wouldn’t trade you for anything.” 

A little line appeared between Steve’s eyebrows, and he searched her face.

“Do I know you?” he asked quietly. “You look a bit like my mother.”

Ellie swallowed. “What was she like?”

Steve smiled, searching her face with a light in his eye. 

“I’ve never met anyone braver than her,” he said.

Ellie’s heart was so full, it hurt. “I’ll have a chance to explain who I am later.”

Steve nodded. He looked sad and determined.

Then he started to fade. 

For a few seconds, as he departed, Ellie could vividly see an image of a cobblestone street overlooking an ocean. She saw Steve, in an older, red, white and blue suit, on a motorcycle with a young man on the back. They were speeding away... but she could see that the boy looked her age, and he wore blue. A rocket rumbled in front of them, as they clearly raced to get their hands on it. 

Then Ellie was yanked back, hard.

  
  
  


Ellie fell backwards, the sharp edges and metal surfaces of heavy machinery biting into her shoulder and hip. Her wrists and waist were bound again. 

_ Oh _ , _ crap, _ she thought.  _ Back here to this. _

Had she succeeded? Had anything changed at all? Was Ian still alive? Once again, she wondered what future hung in the balance for them.

She then realized that the machine once behind her was now below her. Vision hazy, she looked up, and found the walls of a stone chasm on either side, several dozen yards up.

Something had caused another earthquake, best she could tell, and she was now underneath the stone floor where she’d started.

She felt a jolt in her stomach as she discovered how precariously the machinery wobbled in the chasm, which ran far deeper below her.

She involuntarily twisted her head around over her left shoulder to see the cavernous gap below her, peeking through holes in the machine. She gasped and shivered, terror finally catching up with her again. 

So close to possible success, and still so close to death. And trapped here.

There was a loud bang very close to her right ear, and Ellie screamed in surprise. The light from above flickered as someone then leapt across her hazy field of vision.

“Sorry!” a familiar voice said.

She looked to her right wrist, and it was free of the restraint. 

She spun her head around and struggled to focus her vision on her left wrist… just as a silver metal fist punched the side of the restraint and broke it.


	13. The Gang

Her arms were free.

She looked to see Bucky - a radically different Bucky than the one who brought her- balancing himself on the side wall of the chasm, to avoid putting any more weight on the machine under her. His hair was shoulder length now. He wore clothes built for combat and he had a silver, bionic arm . 

And his eyes were much, much kinder. And much more fatigued.

“Shift that way, as much as you can,” he said, pointing right.

She twisted to the right, clearing the space for him to reach one bolt of the restraint around her waist. He paused, aimed... then punched and ripped. And she was free.

The machine below her lurched, and she panicked. Bucky grabbed her left arm just under the shoulder and she flung herself at him.

They both slammed against the side of the chasm, and Ellie scrabbled for purchase on the rock face as the machine tilted, gave out a long screeching scrape, and fell angrily down the gap.

Somehow, there was rock underneath her feet, and Bucky’s arm pressed comfortingly against her. Ellie took a moment to catch her breath, willing herself to not look down anymore.

“Don’t look down,” she whispered, “Don’t look down.”

“Solid plan,” Bucky said quietly.

“That’s a… that’s a real drop there,” she muttered. 

“Well, it’s not imaginary,” he said. “Climb onto my back.”

She swallowed her alarm at the suggestion, and moved to do it quickly before she thought too much and lost the nerve.

Somehow he stayed balanced and slipped her on as easily as if she were a backpack. Her brain worked to catch up to all that had happened. 

“Okay,” Ellie said, “Okay. Okay, uhh..”

“Take a second,” Bucky said, reassuringly. “Just hold on to me. I got this. I don’t know where you went, but you were quite the little Rogers-style busybody.”

There was no ice in his jab this time. He had a new warmth to his voice. Bucky was already finding handholds and carefully climbing with her on his back. 

“You’re really still gonna talk like that?” she said reflexively.

“Talk like what? I talk like me,” he said.

“It’s… a little rude.”

Bucky chuckled silently. “Sorry,” he said.

“Do you need me to-”

“You keep holding on, that’s good,” he said. “That gets our job done. Hopefully, Ian and the earthquake are keeping them busy enough that they won’t immediately blow our heads off when we pop up.”

“That would be useful. I’m fond of my head.”

“Ditto.”

“Do you... know who I am?” Ellie said.

Bucky let out a gentle sigh. “It’s complicated, but yeah.”

“I’m honestly still unclear how untying knots in the time-space continuum works,” Ellie said.

“Me too. But I’d rather figure it out in a location that’s not Latveria. So let’s do that step first.”

They both nodded gently at each other.

They climbed, slowly and carefully. She soon neared the point where they would be easily visible to anyone near the opposite side of the wide crevice. She felt Bucky tense and pause a moment. Ellie shifted to watch behind them, and laid her hand on a gun she felt at Bucky’s hip. He continued up.

They were nearly at the top of the wide crevice in the lab floor. It was strangely quiet.

“Keep watching,” he said. She shifted so she could keep her head down and still watch their back, while he dipped his head above the crevice and scouted their side.

“Clear,” she whispered.

“Clear,” he mouthed back as he ducked his head back down. “Take the gun.”

She repositioned herself again, as far up his back as she could. Ellie took the gun, took a breath and launched herself up into a roll as fast as she could.

She saw a swatch of green come for her instantly. 

And then Bucky was there, and engaged her attacker. Doom flew back and fell to the ground.

She and Bucky both saw Ian at the same time -- in a struggle with Zola’s same robot form. Guards littered the floor on either side of them, alongside the unmoving form of the furry creature. But Zola had some sort of halo in his hand, and desperately wanted it on Ian’s head. And Ian looked exhausted.

Ellie immediately sent two shots through the connective tissue at the robot’s head. As she assumed, the simple handgun didn’t do much damage to a structure Zola built to contain himself. But it startled him, and Bucky immediately followed up with a powerful blow to the screen on the front of Zola’s form.

“I am NOT in the mood for either of you,” Bucky complained to Zola and Doom both. 

He stepped in front of Ian, and motioned for Ellie to join them. She lowered her gun to her side, but stayed alert. She relished the chance to get behind Bucky, if she we honest with herself. Once behind him, she broke visual contact with Doom and Zola to throw her arms around Ian, who seemed relieved to have a moment to catch his breath in her embrace.

“If you think you can waltz out of here, you are just as foolish as I thought you were,” Doom bellowed.

“Stuff it, you freak,” Bucky replied, slowly backing the three of them closer to the elevator.

“It’s clear to us that the girl is worthless,” Zola said, halo limp in his robot hand. “But you have there next to her the means to truly secure your own escape. Don’t be foolish, Barnes.”

“No trades, no negotiations, Zola,” Bucky asserted.

Zola continued. “You will not be leaving here with my son.”

“Eat my entire ass, you pig,” Ian said.

“What he said,” Bucky added. “The other supersoldier who’s repeatedly kicked your asses has already breached Latverian borders during that quake, and is waiting nearby to transport us home. If you think he and his S.H.I.E.L.D. reinforcements will let you touch one hair on either of their heads, you’ve lost your damn mind, Zola. And you-”

Doom loomed close, but had remained silent.

“If you think pissing off SHIELD and Steve Rogers is a good idea at this delicate moment in your political career,” Bucky said, “you’re dumber than you look. This is over, and you both know it.”

The two villains stood silent, watching them as they reached the elevator. Ellie couldn’t tell if she should expect another shoe to drop. Was their enemies’ silence from defeat? Or a surety that the three of them couldn’t leave the castle?

Ian pressed the button, and the elevator door slid open. The three of them entered the car silently, and Bucky pressed the button for the hangar as the doors closed. The elevator shifted into movement.

Ellie stood there, numb. Waiting to see what would happen.

The door slid open and they were in the hangar. It was empty of personnel.

But as they walked out toward the big entrance, there was Sam... standing there with some sort of pack on his back, watching the Latverian skies.

He turned and smiled warmly at Ellie.

“They’ve just arrived,” Sam said to Bucky.

“No shit!” Bucky said with genuine surprise. “Really?”

Ian and Ellie looked at each other wide-eyed.

“That was a bluff?” Ian said.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “But I called it, didn’t I?” He grinned.

Ian exchanged a look with Ellie, then leaned a little toward her and offered a shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. 

Ellie climbed up piggyback style. And she rested her foot while Ian and Bucky walked out to meet Sam with relief.

  
  
  


Five minutes later, Sam’s very impressive wingspan had gotten them all into the hovering QuinJet, and they were leaving Latverian headspace. Ellie found comfort and familiarity in the military-grade metal seat of this utilitarian jet, next to Ian. 

Sharon piloted the plane, taking them to wherever Ellie supposed home might be now. Natasha had greeted Bucky with a exasperated punch to the shoulder and then a hug, and now tended to a wound he had on his head. This Bucky looked both sadder and happier than the one she’d met before. A little voice in the back of Ellie’s head wondered how her actions changed Bucky’s reasons for being in the castle, but she didn’t think on it too long. 

Tending to Ian’s wounds - and beaming at Ian and Ellie with pride - was a younger-looking, clearly serumed Steve. She felt like she’d seen a dozen different versions of that face over the last month of her life. This one looked remarkably like her father, if her father had a gentler life. Fewer facial scars, a little less hurt in his eyes. That fierce little feral bit of joy her father protected so carefully within himself was brighter and broader in this Steve. His joy was further cultivated, though his jaw was still as defiant as ever.

“Do you remember me?” Ellie asked this new Steve. 

“From my time tripping?” Steve asked in return. Then he nodded. “You kept me brutally honest. I’m very humbled.”

Had Ellie been even just a tiny bit less drained - down to her very bones - she thought she might have wept uncontrollably. As it was, a few tears fell. And she smiled happily at him.

Ellie was glad she had nothing to accomplish, and nowhere to run to. She could sit on this hard seat. It felt warm and comfortable… especially where Ian’s knee bumped hers as he helped clean her wrist wounds, and where Nat jostled her when she sat down on the other side. And where Steve watched over her, and Sharon flew her to safety, and where Bucky grumbled about something in the corner. And where she was surrounded by people who cared about her. It was strange and familiar all at once. It was grounding and soothing and distracting and hard to take in. 

They were all safe, this world was safe. And that was enough for now. That felt like home.

  
  
  


She hopped gently around the kitchen that Ian agreed was usually at least half hers. On most Sunday mornings, it was entirely hers, as she generally had plans for big piles of eggs and pancakes and he would do better to just stay out of the way.

Today Ian said he’d provide breakfast, and was currently gone procuring it. Ellie prepared a large pot of coffee, in a coffeemaker that worked. And that she would likely use for the foreseeable future. No more fleeing from one place to another. It was an odd sensation, the potential for staying somewhere long enough to get used to an appliance. It sounded less exhausting this way though, so she thought it was worth trying out. 

Today she was pouring coffee for Sam and Bucky, who had stopped by to see her. They sat at the folding table that marked off Ian’s “dining room.”

“Ian should be back any second with a remarkable number of… danishes, I think he called them?” Ellie told them.

“Thank you,” Sam said sweetly as Ellie sat coffee in front of him. “Sounds about right, he’s a danish man.”

“You have so many breads that are so…” She pursed her lips in distaste, looking for the right word, as she headed back to the kitchen.

“Sugary?” Sam said. 

“Tasty?” Bucky said, at the same time.

Ellie smiled to herself, amused. She gathered the cream from the fridge and shoved it under her arm. Then she took a fistful of sugar packets and her coffee to the table to join them.

“All the bread I knew was less sweet,” she said. “It’s a very different taste experience.”

“Have you tried bagels?” Sam asked.

The word sounded familiar but Ellie couldn’t remember trying it. None of the food stations in her neighborhood back home had any, and she hadn’t had the chance to experiment much here yet. She shook her head.

“The next time Ian goes to the store for breakfast,” Sam instructed, “have him get you a bagel with lox and cream cheese. See what you think.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. She pulled out her phone and wrote “bagels, locks, cream cheese(?)” on a list she kept of recommendations people gave her.

She noticed she had been engaging Sam more than Bucky. She noticed that despite Bucky’s kindness now, and despite his instant impulses to look after her when she returned, she felt something that kept her from being entirely comfortable with him.

She searched for something lighthearted to ask him. But she failed, and they sat in silence longer than she wanted.

“Thanks for helping me move the couch around,” Ellie said. 

“How did he even get in and out of the spare room with it there?” Bucky asked.

“He just leapt over it every time,” Ellie replied. “Because that’s easier than moving it, I guess.”

Sam chuckled. “That boy isn’t quite quite right,” he said good-naturedly.

“On that topic,” she said, exasperated. “If there’s anything he’s got stored in that room that you want, please just feel free to take it.” She threw up her hands in resignation. “He doesn’t even notice his own stuff. What he has, what’s broken, what’s in the way. Like, I know having stuff of your own can be weird, but I’m kinda hoping I’m more skilled at it than he is by the time I’ve been here a few years.”

Bucky smiled.

It had all spilled out, and now she’d run out of words again. She absentmindedly brushed her hair behind her ear.

“Oh, I dropped a bag in there that Nat wanted me to give you,” Bucky said.

“Oh,” Ellie said, curious. “Thanks, I guess. Do you know what it is?”

“I didn’t open it,” Bucky deadpanned, “but it smells like knives to me.”

Ellie stifled her gasp, and just smiled. It must be the beautiful knife set she’d “borrowed” from the bunker armory.

“Please thank her for me,” Ellie offered.

Bucky nodded. “We should make you a list of movies to see,” he said into his coffee.

“That’s a good idea,” Sam said. “And music.” 

Sam dropped to a whisper as he picked up his coffee. “Don’t trust anything at all about Steve’s musical taste.” He took a sip. “Or this one’s.” He pointed at Bucky.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you can’t appreciate Japanese noise,” Bucky said.

“Is that a… a musical style?” Ellie asked.

“It is a very creative and expressive musical style,” Bucky said. “I think you have to be older, and a little more mature to really appreciate it.” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“You have to be old and deaf and not care anymore, is what you mean.” Sam said.

Ellie giggled as they bickered with each other.

She looked again at Bucky. And he looked back.

“When you like who you are,” Bucky said, “you can open yourself to a broader range of art in the world.” He gave her a wink.

At Bucky’s remark, she realized why she was uncomfortable with him. She felt guilty, for changing his life so much. For convincing Steve to leave him to whatever torture he experienced. Steve must feel the same way. Would they both carry this?

Ellie also realized that Bucky knew just exactly how she was feeling. 

She smiled worriedly at him. This would be complicated.

Keys jangled at the door.

“Knock knock,” Ian said as he entered. 

“Hey man,” Bucky said.

“They’re tearing up the sidewalk,” Ian complained. “Again. I could have used those wings to get here a lot faster.”

“That’s cute that you think you could manage to get off the ground with them,” Sam poked.

Ian gave him a look with just a little bit of heat as he dropped the bags on the table and headed for the coffeemaker. These two didn’t have the hostility they had when Ellie first met Sam. But they were still a work in progress.

“First things first. You getting her hooked up on the good movies, Ian?” Bucky said.

“Ummm,” Ian said, searching for a coffee mug. “Mostly the good cartoons so far.”

“Oh! And the Muppets!” Ellie said excitedly. “Lots of Muppets.”

“Mmmm, danishes,” Sam said as he started opening all the bags and handing out napkins.

“Ellie,” Ian said, as he returned to sit with his coffee. “I know you weren’t feeling the danishes last time, so I got you a bagel to try.”

Ellie smiled. And she felt quite content.


	14. The Future

**ONE MONTH LATER**

Ellie crossed the busy street clutching a brown paper bag with her bagel and lox in one hand and a tall coffee in the other. Threading through the buildings of the waterfront neighborhood, she thought she should be getting close to the park Sharon mentioned. 

She marveled at the neighborhood’s brick walls with old painted advertisements and fresh new murals and graffiti. The change from where she grew up always thrilled her -- to be surrounded by such life and passion and disobedience. She risked mashing her bagel to brush her fingers across a particularly alluring brick rainbow.

Ellie briefly considered adding tacos to her breakfast, after smelling the kitchen she just passed. But then she left an alleyway between tall buildings, and her surroundings suddenly opened onto the river, with a tiny patch of green in front of it. Sharon was there, waving her over to a bench on the green knoll, and decided she’d start with what she had.

“Hey, you found it!” Sharon said.

“It’s so beautiful here!” Ellie marveled.

Past the weathered railing in front of them, ferries cut through the water in the distance. Near them, squirrels dove down a small handful of tree trunks to steal food from brightly dressed people enjoying the day outside. A city skyline across the water glinted in the sunlight.

“This is a favorite spot,” Sharon said.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Ellie said.

“I can’t believe we went two weeks without seeing each other,” Sharon said. “It’s absurd. I should have paid more attention.”

“No, it’s fine, you’ve been busy with cleanup on the big cyber attack,” Ellie said.

“Well,” Sharon replied, biting into a sandwich, “It’s my impression that we were managing a shell, an empty husk of an attack, after your work. Has anybody thanked you for saving the world yet?”

“Not really,” Ellie said.

“Oh, well...” Sharon smiled. “Get used to that.”

She sounded so much like her own mother right there, Ellie’s breath caught for an instant. What was it? Her tone? Her warmth? The “toughen up” message in her words?

Ellie looked Sharon in the eye, and thought about the three of them… the two Sharons she had been given. Both made of grit and determination. Both cared for her. 

Both had their own fears, Ellie imagined, of getting close and losing something that may be impossible to live without.

“How’s the job hunt going?” Sharon asked.

Ellie grimaced. “Remarkably well, I guess, for someone with no real job skills.”

“I’m telling you,” Sharon said, shaking her head and gaining volume, “I know it’s not glamorous, but data entry is quick to pick up, and easy, for someone as bright as you. It would pay the bills until you get your bearings. It wouldn’t overtax you. It’s-”

Sharon stopped abruptly, as Ellie realized she probably rolled her eyes at her.

“The offer stands,” Sharon concluded gracefully, with a smile.

This Sharon, Ellie thought, might have had more opportunities to learn to reign in her own bullheadedness than her mother had. Perhaps that would rub off on Ellie too.

“Thank you,” Ellie said. “I do appreciate that.”

Sharon’s voice softened. “How’s the adjustment going?”

“It’s fine,” Ellie said. “Ian’s got me started on several good tv shows. I haven’t been in armed combat in a month. That’s a little surreal to be honest.” 

Sharon nodded, and Ellie searched for more details to share.

“Turns out I love Thai food,” she added. “A lot.”

Sharon nodded and smiled.

“The nightmares are still pretty common,” Ellie offered quietly. “But I figure that’ll be true for a while.”

She examined the wake made by the latest ferry slicing through the surface of the river.

“Ian found me a shoe insert that helps my foot quite a bit,” Ellie said hopefully.

Sharon nodded again.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“I call you and Steve only about half as often as I want to,” Ellie said abruptly. “To make sure…”

Ellie trailed off.

“To make sure it’s us you really want to talk to?”

Ellie nodded.

Sharon pursed her lips, and shifted to face Ellie more directly.

“Ellie, I hope you’re giving yourself credit for how masterfully you’re managing an overwhelmingly complicated and difficult grief process.”

Ellie stared at the nearest tree while Sharon talked.

“I mean,” Sharon continued. “I have to imagine you and I might have a similarity or two. So I suspect you’re working much too hard at demanding too much of yourself.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look at her.

“I hope this isn’t out of line,” Sharon said. “But I must tell you, directly and explicitly…”

Sharon paused, clearly working to get past a lump in her throat.

“If I were your mother,” she continued, “I would be overwhelmed with pride and awe in you. For what you’ve accomplished, both in caring for other people and in simply being an exemplary and breathtakingly brave and kind young woman.”

Ellie closed eyes that were welling with tears. Sharon’s words felt so good and she just wanted to sit there, to feel them fill her up, to hold them tight and not let go.

When she opened her eyes again, she immediately gasped.

The most beautiful swarm of birds was approaching from across the water.

Sharon’s excitement was instantaneous.

“Oh!” she cried. “I was hoping we’d see some when I asked you to meet me here. They start migrating this time of year.”

The birds continued toward them, this cloud of black wings spinning and dashing in the air. Portions of the enormous cloud of birds lightened and darkened as they moved, painting a constantly changing charcoal and ink image across the sky. There might have been thousands of birds, linked together in this strange dance. They came closer, and filled up more of the sky.

“Are they migrating?” Ellie asked. “Or are they dancing?”

“Migration isn’t a straight line, I guess,” Sharon said, marveling. “Maybe they don’t want the journey to be too boring.”

“Do you know what kind they are?” Ellie asked.

“Those are starlings,” Sharon said.  “A group of them is called a murmuration.”

Ellie’s breath caught on the beauty of the name.

“They’re not native here, you know,” Sharon said with a hint of slyness to her voice.

“Oh?”

“They were forcibly introduced,” Sharon continued. “But they still thrive here.”

Ellie was giddy at the woman’s sweetness, and complete lack of subtlety in making her point.

“You’re very clever,” she told Sharon.

Sharon nodded, and lifted her sandwich.

“Thank you for noticing,” Sharon said, as she took a bite.

Ellie smiled with her whole heart, and kept watching the birds dip and dance on the wind as she ate next to Sharon.

  
  
  
  


**ONE YEAR LATER**

Ellie put the finishing touches on etching her logo - the letter R inside a small stylized bird in flight - into the strip of metal. Then she headed back to her preferred workbench, the one at just the right height, where the rest of her work-in-progress sat.  

She liked using the school’s studio on Saturday nights, so much so that she’d usually stay right through until Sunday morning. She was often alone during those hours, which made it easier to concentrate.

She picked up her welding torch, then thought better of her first idea and set it back down again.

She hopped around to grab her favorite hammer, and began making adjustments to one end of the piece in her hand, when she heard someone call out over her banging.

“Hey there,” a familiar voice said.

She turned around to find Steve standing at the door to the studio.

Ellie broke into a broad grin.

“Hi!” she replied. She dropped what was in her hands and wanted to hug him, getting close enough to get one hand on his shoulder. Only then did realize how dirty her overalls were.

She pulled back, but Steve wouldn’t have it, pulling her into a hug anyway.

“I’m messing up your suit!” she protested. “Why are you in a suit?”

Steve pulled away and rolled his eyes.

“Tis’ the season for asking congress for S.H.I.E.L.D. funds.”

“Oh God,” Ellie said, wincing. “How many people had to die before you were the best choice for that task?”

“Excuse me, I have a very winsome personality!” he exclaimed. “I get invited to plenty of parties, thank you very much. Also, Sharon was busy. As were four other people.”

“Ah,” she said.

He leaned against a desk, hands in his pockets, with that face that told a person there was nothing else he’d rather be doing than talking to them. And he nodded toward the half-done statue. “How’s the latest project going?”

“Slowly,” Ellie said, putting her hands on her hips. “But I am, I think, gradually getting it into a shape I could be pleased with.” 

She nodded, and Steve smiled.

“Tony hates it,” Ellie said.

“Doesn’t Tony hate most of the art he pulls into these auctions?”

“Possibly,” she said. “You know, you really, really didn’t have to talk him into including me in this one.”

“I didn’t talk him into anything!” Steve protested. “You’ve got buzz already.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Well, it’ll get a few pity dollars into a charity’s hands. I guess that’s something.”

Steve shook his head at her. “How’s school going?” he asked.

“Not bad,” Ellie said. “I think I’m butting heads less often with the instructors this semester.”

“Well done, there. I have some idea how much work that must take for you.”

Ellie sighed. “They’re so wrong, so often, Steve.”

“I know,” he consoled.

“They don’t know anything about art!”

“Despite being art instructors. Strange.”

“Yeah, you might have to hear me bitch about that more, now that Ian’s called a moratorium on me explaining to him how wrong they are.”

“Oh, dear.”

“But. I am still... “ She stood back mid-sentence and looked appraisingly at what she’d done so far on her piece.

“I know I’ve got more to learn,” she said.

“That’s a fantastic place to be,” Steve replied.

Ellie nodded.

“Well,” Steve said. “Might you be available for supper some time soon? I don’t want to interrupt your flow.”

“Oh my god, that’s a great idea, I’m starving.”

Ellie slapped Steve on the arm and walked past him.

“I’ll change!” she called out. “And you can take me out to eat.”

“Deal,” Steve called out from the other room. “I’ll call Ian. He’s in town. Maybe he can join us.”

Ellie stopped at a sink to wash her hands. When she was done, she stepped into a cramped side closet where she’d set up a changing station and kept extra clothes. She slid out of her work overalls, threw jeans and a hoodie on, and found her speckled little hand mirror to check her hair. It was a mess, but it was an artful mess. So she left it.

Before putting the mirror down, she paused a moment to look herself in the eye. It had been a tumultuous year, full of ups and downs, loneliness and joy. But she could honestly say she was okay… and maybe even happy more often than not.

She hadn’t chosen where she ended up. She wouldn’t have chosen the pain. If it meant seeing her family again, she’d give up all the ease and all of the comfort and head right back.

But she found beauty and love here that she could embrace. And that was enough to call it home.


End file.
